Love You Forever

About 25 years ago, Gerald and I attended a family camp with our oldest two children, Luke and Shulamith, the only ones we had at the time. It was there that I first read the children's book Love You Forever, by Robert Munsch. I'm a total wimp, so of course the book brought me to tears as I thought about my grandma and how she would rock me in her rocking chair and sing "Ba, ba, ba means I love you." When I got home, I immediately bought my own copy of the book, and I read it to all my children as they came along. In this book, the mother does not sing "Ba, ba, ba"; she sings, "I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."

Recently, while visiting my friend Lindsey, I saw these words in vinyl lettering on the wall in her baby's room. What? I want this! I totally want this! And thus the process began of making this dream a reality. It wasn't easy. As most of you know, I cannot do crafts. In reality, I can't do much of anything that lies outside my woefully limited skill set. Essentially, if it doesn't involve giving a talk, teaching a lesson, or writing a blog post, I can't do it. True story. So how on earth would I manage vinyl lettering on a wall? No idea. But I went ahead and ordered it anyway. When I get my mind set on something, I'm not easily dissuaded.

The lettering arrived a few days ago, but I waited until the weekend when Gerald would be home to help me. I'm sure this wasn't exactly what he wanted to do with his Saturday, but he was willing, thank goodness. My plan was to put the lettering in my bathroom, with baby pictures of each of my children beneath it. I thought finding the baby pictures would be the easy part, but no. Turns out we don't own one single photo of Eli in his first year. Not one! It's as if he was adopted at age 3. I'm pretty sure he's been around all along, but I've nothing to prove it. We have hundreds of pictures of Luke, many of Shulamith, and a few of Isaiah. Poor Eli! I must have been way too busy with four little kids to take pictures? Once Seth arrived, we were back in the saddle, taking plenty of pictures, but we really missed the mark with Eli.

I waded through a dozen photo albums and ultimately settled for one of Eli when he was maybe 2-1/2. Best I could do. The other kids' pics are from their first year. Boom! Gerald did a wonderful job putting up the lettering. I was too nervous to watch for the most part, but I did grab this one picture so you could see:

And then. You'll never guess what happened next. After he measured ever so carefully, several times, and applied the lettering just perfectly, I looked up at the wall and what did I see? A SPELLING ERROR! Not kidding. The word "always" was spelled "alwauys." Heavy sigh. I was so sad. After all the emotional energy I had invested in this thing, now we had a poem on our bathroom wall with a glaring spelling error. Yes, yes, I could call the company tomorrow and make them send me new lettering, and we could start over. Of course. Still. How disappointing. Gerald said he would try to fix it somehow; at this point, he couldn't ruin it, so why not? I was not optimistic, and I went to bed.

And guess what? I awoke an hour later when Isaiah got home from work to find the lettering perfect. Absolutely perfect! Gerald somehow removed the "u" and made it look exactly the way it should. How did he do this? I have no idea. But I was so excited. So here is the finished wall:

Woo! I totally love it. How could anyone not? Well, I guess it's possible not to love it, though I really don't get how. Matt doesn't love it. He hates it. He hates all such things, all uplifting sayings displayed in homes. Hates them passionately! He told Shulamith if she ever tried such a thing in their house, he would peel the letters off one by one with his bare hands. Ahh, Matt. We love you. Even if you hate my new bathroom wall display, we love you. In fact, we love you forever!