And just like that…Jack is a TWEEN!! Yesterday my baby turned 11! My “make a wish” number. And clearly my wish came true.

I admit I thought about tweezing the little strands of his armpit hair as they seem to grow too quickly these days, and, well, I still can’t quite get rid of his toddler train set.

He is after all, my BABY.

But, okay, now he’s grown up.

And even though I have no real idea what he’s actually saying when he tries to explain Roblox to me, I could listen to this child of mine forever.

When I asked him what his favorite part of yesterday was, my part-billie-goat mover of a son said, climbing on the rocks in Central Park.

When he asked me what my favorite part of yesterday was I said — aside from seeing him the very moment I woke up — standing with him at sunset on the Edge, a 360 view overlooking NYC.

The Edge is a small triangle of glass that juts out of a giant building on NYC’s west side, and it looks out over everything. It’s a view that is so high you can’t see the toughness of the ways the city has changed, or the dramas of the many storefronts that have closed this year.

You see the beauty and power of NYC, and can even feel its energy again.

As my daughter and I looked east, she said it perfectly. “It’s a view that screams, every window has a story.”

Reminding us that we are only one person, and everybody has a story. We all share the same airspace and planet, the shared human experience.

This place also reminds us that we are kind of always standing at the Edge. Every “life quake” we face - big and small - brings us to an edge, and how we chose to see that edge IS WHAT DEFINES US.

Do you see your edge as a scary cliff, or a limit?

Or do you see your edge as a beginning of something new? An opening?

All I see now?

An 11 year old tween with blue eyes and a huge heart who I think equally longs for the play we shared in his childhood, a spirit I hope never goes away.

And my guess is it never will.

With fierce love,
Alison