Dear Elliot,

Happy birthday, Charlie Bogantz.  Happy birthday, LeBron James.  Happy birthday... my son.  I love all the different parts of your personality:  your goofy grin and deep rolling belly laugh when you’re laughing at one of your own jokes... the crazy look in your eyes when you’re playing basketball and determined to score “one more time” before dinner... the passion and focus in every movement when you’re singing and dancing to one of your favorite songs like “Billie Jean” or “Chasing Corporate.”  I love you so very much.

You’ve been a part of our family for eight years now -- but you’re still as enthralling and intriguing and alluring as ever (I use these big words on purpose, by the way, in the hopes that you will look them up in the dictionary, pick up some new vocabulary, and hopefully make a connection in your mind between those words and my feelings towards you).  Yes, you’re still as enthralling and intriguing and alluring as ever, and perhaps even more enthralling-and-intriguing-and-alluring than ever before.  Because you’ve grown and added more layers to your personality.  Elliot, I consider it a great privilege to be able to watch you grow and become the person that you’re becoming.  As I think through everything that you experienced during the course of the last year -- your eighth year of life -- I’m amazed to see just how much can happen in such a time period.

Your eighth year of life has been one of dealing with increasingly complex relational tensions at school.  Boys with behavioral issues... girls who are “een beetje verliefd op jou”... kids from all different kinds of ethnic and religious and economic backgrounds.  Elementary school never seemed to be that complex for me, when I was a boy.  But then again, you don’t make it seem all that complex either.  To you, it’s natural and easy.  To you it’s doable.  Your behavior towards others is marked by love and gentleness and kindness.  There may be difficulties and annoyances at times, but you seem to take it all in stride.  This makes me really admire you, Elliot.  I’m really proud of the ways that you maintain healthy relationships with so many different people.

Your eighth year of life has also been one of developing a deep and abiding appreciation for sports:  baseball and basketball, in particular.  Seriously:  just about any day when it’s moderately warm and it’s not raining or snowing (and sometimes even on days when it is raining or snowing!), you’re asking to go to the baseball diamond at the Middenmeer sport park.  Or if it’s not baseball, it’s basketball!  I love how you put on your head-band (just like LeBron James) and your uniform (just like the real Cleveland Cavaliers), even if it’s just for five minutes of shooting around in the basement before dinner.  You find such joy in the rhythm, the language, the exertion of sport -- and I especially appreciate how these are things that we can enjoy together.  You really have developed some impressive skills throughout the last year, when it comes to throwing, shooting, catching, and hitting.  Keep up the good work, my boy.  Some boys (and men) can take sports a little bit too seriously sometimes, to the point where it’s not really fun anymore.  But for you, Elliot, I hope that sports can be a lifelong source of fun, physical development, and relationship building.  As long as you can practice a little bit of moderation, sports can be a very wonderful thing indeed...

Your eighth year of life has, perhaps most significantly, been a year of learning to overcome your fears.  At various times during the course of the last year, you’ve been deathly afraid of, let’s see... Saturday swimming lessons, museum closing times, tram rides, anesthesiologists, dark rooms, hair-cuts (but only because you were growing your hair long), and the flame-throwing scoreboard at the Q in Cleveland.  Quite the list, isn’t it?  I write this down in the hope that we will be able to laugh about it all together someday.  But for now, for you, these are just your daily realities.  You’re being forced to learn that overcoming fears is just a part of becoming a man.  There are so many scary things in the world, you just have to learn to face your fears and choose for courage.  This is why we’ve been reading you parts of Joshua chapter 1 almost every night for the last couple of months.  When God is with you (and I feel confident of the fact that He is with you, Elliot), no one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life.  As God was with Moses, so He will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you.  Be strong and courageous... Be strong and very courageous... Use the Bible as your guidebook, that you may be successful wherever you go... Meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.  Then you will be prosperous and successful.  Haven’t you been commanded?  Be strong and courageous.  Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.

I feel like I could make this letter last for pages and pages.  But I wonder it might be better if I leave it at this for right now.  Let love and faithfulness never leave you... work hard and play hard... and be strong and courageous.  If you could manage a lifetime of these three things, you would live a very good life indeed.  Happy Birthday, my boy -- my son, my flibbertigibbit.  I love you more than words could ever say...

Dad