“It gets better.”

“Mom, I wish you had some kind of record of the things I said when I was little.”

The incredulous look on my face may have been apparent to him, and I didn’t mind.  I wasn’t hiding it.

“Tyler, are you kidding me right now?”

“Yeah, I just wish there was some way to know what I said and did back when I was little.”

“Dude.”

“What.”

“I wrote down basically everything. It’s all on a blog.  And most of it is in a book.”

“Oh.  That’s right.  Can I read it?”

This is only the greatest moment I’ve been waiting for…and writing for.  He settled in beside me, and I pulled up the column that is his very own, Tyler Says.  And we read and read, taking turns.  He loved the funny lines, the quippy words, his giant vocabulary tucked inside a little body.  And he asked me to skip over the sad ones, when he was three years old and struggling with the reality that had capsized us.

“Mom, I was a cool kid.”

“A very cool kid. You still are.”

“If I could go back in time, I know what I would do. Two things.”

“Tell me.”

“First, I’d want to hang out with little Tyler.  He seems like my kind of dude.”

I’d say so, yes.  In every single way.

“And I’d visit you in your sad years so I could say, ‘Hold on tight, Mom.  It gets better.'”

~ ~ ~

Sharing his words with you today,
just in case you need someone to visit your window in time and say,

“Hold on tight.  It gets better.”