Sometimes the best rewards are the ones that come tagging along quite a while after they are expected---or never expected at all. Your momma had told me all along that because of her age when she married, and because of the costs involved in raising kids, Allie would be the only baby she and your dad would have. All along, I doubted her. All along, I felt your presence somewhere out there, looking for the door into your life. You were unwilling to be left out, and I thank God that you were. Ever since the day you slipped silently into the world, I have known that I would love you best because you were the last---there would be no more new nieces or nephews for me, no more grandchildren for Grandma and Papa Welker. Your little old man personality has proved that you were indeed worth the wait and the worry....and all the love we were ready to lavish on you, whether you wanted us to or not.
Like your sister, you were in a big hurry to get born; your momma never even got to a proper delivery room. Grandma was in triage with her when you were born, and she has said from the first instant, you never let out a peep; instead, you came out looking around to see what this new world was all about. For the last five years, that's pretty much been your standard mode: little old man just taking in the whole crazy world. Oh, yes, you can be charmed or distracted into playing now, but most of your baby months (a couple of years, really), you adopted a look of such gravity as you gave people and things a hard stare that it was VERY clear you were silently judging us. It became a classic mash-up of "You people are all NUTS" and resignation that you couldn't do anything about it. Yet your wise eyes always tried to hide a secret behind the judgment: Really, you found it all interesting and a little funny. When your momma would nurse you, she had to take you to a room where there was no one else, because even though she would have you covered, if anyone else started talking, you would turn your head away from her and pull off the nursing cover and stare at whoever was speaking as though you thought you could probably figure out what was said AND come up with an intelligent response, given enough time.
As you grew, you developed a head of wild dirty-blond curls and eyes that grew darker all the time. No one wanted to be responsible for making the decision to cut off those curls, and I absolutely forbid it before my wedding, when you were just a little over a year old. The fact that you refused to go down the aisle between those strangers in no way diminished my joy at having you as a tiny ring bearer; seeing you dressed in your little gray vest and pants with your purple shirt, with all those curls waving, was worth the whole day. In fact, when that little outfit arrived and Mom, Grandma, Uncle Galen, and I had you try it on several weeks ahead of time, your reaction was absolutely priceless: you made a couple of passes around, strutting in a way I have never seen a toddler strut. You were the very picture of the old-time phrase of a "banty rooster" preening for us. You were ridiculously cute, and somehow you knew it, even though we didn't react at how you looked until you started puffing yourself up and swanning up and down the length of the room. When we started roaring with laughter, you added a grin that said, "I knew you were gonna see how cute I was, all along." You've become only a bigger version of that guy in the four years since then, too cute for your own good, too handsome to overlook.
Those first two years weren't without a lot of worry, though. For nine months or so, every month, you would develop a fever out of nowhere that would wear you down for a few days, then break, only to return three or four weeks later. It was never easy to see you with your red cheeks and those round, fever-dulled eyes drooping. Several doctors were consulted, and no one had a very clear answer. Finally, one doctor here in Tulsa eased your parents' minds by saying that fevers would probably be the norm for you for a while, just as for some kids it's puking or ear infections, or even no problem at all. You proved the doctor right, thankfully---that stage passed after several months, and you've rarely had fevers since. What worried me much more was that for those first couple of years, you would NOT be coaxed into talking. I think everyone knew that you had words in you, since those wise old eyes spoke volumes. But you would not be bullied into contributing to the blather of the everyday world until you were good and ready. I look back at that now and recall how afraid I was that it would put you behind in school if you stayed non-verbal for much longer. But just when I was about to have a serious conversation about it with your mom and dad, recommending testing and intervention, you began to speak, and in my memory, it seems like you spoke almost in full sentences. MIND YOU, no one was going to get you to talk if you didn't want to, even then. If you didn't want to participate, you would just get up and leave the room. More often, though, the words came in a steady torrent of observations and (inevitably) questions....after questions, after questions. Truly, the volume of both was comical. Uncle Galen and I once met your mother here in the city to pick you and Allie up to come stay with us for a few days. The three of you had been to lunch first, almost certainly Mexican food, where you always had milk or lemonade. But that day, as soon as you got yourself loose from your car seat, opened the door, and jumped down from inside the Pilot, you announced, "Uncle Galen, I have tea!" We have laughed ever since that trip, because you never stopped talking from that sentence forward during your whole stay of two or three days. Your sister used to be quite a talker, but you've taken over that job now. Maybe she'll get a word in edgewise again some day.
If I had to give one quality that defines you now, I would have no choice but to say "comic timing." Sometimes your humor is intentional, but just as often it's incidental. Your mom sometimes records those things on Facebook, and you often sound just like Papa and the way he talks---an eighty-year-old in a pre-schooler's body. For example, you recently told your mother that she was "just wasting time!" while she was having a conversation with her friend Courtney. This kind of thing happens multiple times a day, from what I hear. But sometimes you smart off just because you can. I wasn't there, but I think that's what happened when your mother told you to say "excuse me" one day when you tooted in front of guests; you politely did so. When it happened again a bit later, you pre-empted the manners when asked to apologize again, saying, "That's just smoke." How can we tell when your timing is intentional and when it's not? A little thing called "side-eye" these days, which used to be called "cutting your eyes" in older generations. You will say something smart, and when you think it's safe, you look sideways to see if you're getting away with it. If you aren't, you don't usually do a very good job of hiding your grin. The last year or so, it has become really clear to me that you are a little bitty version of Papa in a number of ways, so at Christmas, I asked him, "Did you get in trouble for smarting off as a kid?" He isn't always very forthcoming about his past, but to that question, he immediately responded, "Every day." Now we all love your sense of humor, but I hope for everyone's sake that you don't get in trouble that often!
If you do get in trouble, I don't think it'll bother you for long. Your stubbornness is one of the things that make you entirely Ty (and another quality you get from your papa...and your mother). For example, I had to give you what-for at Christmas when I looked out the window and saw your little head sticking out of the chimney of the grill pit on the patio; when I asked what you were doing there, you replied, "Hiding from Dad." Most likely that was 100% lie. But I didn't have the heart to call you out on it; I just took your picture and posted it to Facebook and told you to get out. Today, your mom caught you trying to get in there again, so that one may be on me. I'll be VERY surprised if you don't get caught doing it again. You also have little patience for being inside. No matter the weather, you'll almost always ask to go outside to play. It's below zero? You'll explain with exasperation that you can put on your coat. It's raining? Pfft. So what? This very day, you had to be told in the middle of winter (a mild day, but still....) not to shoot water guns at friends, siblings, and the poor old dog. You don't seem to care whether it's mountain, prairie, or beach, as long as it's outside. (A little secret when your mom gets on you about this: at least you've never poured buckets of muddy water over your head and put worms and bugs in your pockets to bring them inside, all of which she did.) Oh, to me, one of the most mysterious things about you is this boundless manic energy you have, so intense sometimes that you just have to run, whether it's running inside or out. At our house, you will just run the length of the house, front door to back, when you can't get outside. The last time, Uncle Galen put some music on while you were running, which just revved you up more when ZZ Top came blaring out. You shouted, "Wock and Woll!" and caught another gear. For this reason, you demand shoes that "go fast," which I take to mean they can't be shoes that slip or don't have good traction. You have always had a little bit of a thing about shoes, anyway. You had a pair last summer that "won't listen to me" because they were so hard to put on. And for most of the first two years that you put your shoes on by yourself, you put them on the wrong foot every.....single.....time. One more thing that sets you apart is how you claimed a girlfriend, Chloe, from the age of two until last summer. Chloe lives in Arkansas near Grandma and Papa's vacation home, and last summer, you were still claiming her after a couple of years of meeting up whenever you could get over that way. I hope you didn't break her heart when you started pre-K this year and the visits had to end. More importantly, I hope this doesn't mean you're going to be girl-crazy, because that is one thing your momma simply WILL NOT stand for! (I am sort of not joking here.)
There are one million Ty stories out there becoming family legend, and you're only turning five tomorrow. In a family full of characters, you have no problem pulling your own weight, whether it's your witty powers of observation, your love of water, your need to always be doing, or your ornery grin. You've taken all the best of your Callaway and Welker genes and turned them into an entirely new creation, unlike anyone that has come before. Some days, thinking about that one-of-a-kind kid you are, we might think, "Thank goodness!" So much more often, though, we all think of this little man we've been gifted with and think, "Thank God." Without you, it would be an infinitely more boring world.
