Ashby Bow
“You have taught hundreds of students, and I may be your slowest one. Year by year, you have taught me patience, kindness and how to listen.”
“You may be a bride today, but you will always be my little one. I will blink and see you at five, twirling in your favorite dress.”
“You still take my breath away, the same way you did the first time I ever saw you. Beautiful inside and out, kind in every way that matters, and entirely mine.”
“Years in, and you still walk into a room and take the whole thing with you. I have watched it happen a thousand times and it still catches me off guard.”
“This year tested us in ways I never saw coming. You kept going when everything felt heavy, and you kept all of us going too.”
“You treated me like a grown person years before anybody else was willing to. You asked me real questions and then you actually waited for the whole answer.”
“I taught you to drive in an empty parking lot and I shouted twice. You have driven a very long way since then without asking me anything.”
“You always said every child deserves someone who believes in them. Our baby gets to start life with the best believer I know.”
“People ask what I want for Christmas, and I never have a good answer. The truth is that I got the best gift of my life the day you were born.”
“When I look back on my life, every good chapter has you in it. You are the best part of my story, and I am so glad you were born.”
“The day you arrived, I held you and promised to do my very best. I have not always gotten it right, but I have loved you every single day.”
“Watching you receive your nursing pin was one of the proudest moments of my life. You chose a job that asks a lot of the heart, and yours is more than ready.”
“You pack a diaper bag like you are heading out on a three week expedition. And somehow, every time, you have exactly what our baby needs.”
“People sometimes ask me what I am most proud of in my life. I never have to think about it. The answer is always you.”
“On your first birthday you blew out one candle and clapped for yourself. I have been clapping for you ever since, and I do not plan to stop.”
“You were the first friend I ever had, and nobody had to arrange it. We were handed each other, and we have kept choosing each other ever since.”
“I hope you believe in yourself as much as I believe in you. Always remember you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and loved more than you know.”
“I remember the class that nearly made you quit, and the night you stayed. That night taught you more than any textbook ever could.”
“There is one person alive who remembers the same kitchen that I do. Nobody else will ever get the joke, and that is rather the point of it.”
“You spent years sitting at a desk, and now you get the one at the front. Your students are lucky. They are getting a teacher who truly cares.”
“Yesterday we were two, and today there is a whole new person who needs us. I have never been more nervous, or more sure that I picked the right partner.”
“The same calm your patients count on is the calm our kids feel at home. They may not know it yet, but they have the best nurse in the world for a mom.”
“I have watched you blow out every candle on every cake since the very first. Each year I make the same quiet wish, and each year it comes true.”
“You are the one who knows what everybody was actually like before they were parents. The stories nobody else will tell me about my own mother come from you.”