Hope-Turning Five
I’m four today.
But I’m turning five on my birthday.
March 30th.
I share my birthday with three people.
Nay Nay…
and my great grandpa…
and someone else too.
I like that.
I’m excited about my birthday.
We’re going to have a pool party.
And I’m really excited about the pool.
My mom got a lot of pool toys.
I’m excited about all of them filling up the pool.
There’s a unicorn floaty. It’s my favorite.
I love unicorns. Unicorns are like magical horses.
I want another unicorn pool floaty to play with on my birthday.
One of the swimmy floats popped! But not when I was on it.
It just popped when I was sleeping. So, it’s ok.
I found it in the morning.
I was sad for a minute…but then I wasn’t.
I’m also looking forward to having a brownie today.
Brownies are my favorite dessert. At least for today.
At school, we sing the rule song.
I love the Rule Song…
but not always the rules.
My new best friend is Lola.
She’s new. She my big school best friend.
My cousin Nora is actually my bestest friend.
I have two Noras in my life.
One Nora is from my big girl school, the other is
My cousin, Nora. I’m so lucky. Some people don’t have any Nora’s and I have two.
I love playing and running around with my cousin Nora the best.
We run around and play together all the time. And, then rest. And, then we run and play again. It’s the best.
She’s taking me camping with her grandma and grandpa
the day before my birthday.
I’m turning five. Did I tell you that? Birthdays are the best. Everybody is coming to my house for my birthday.
My aunt asked me if I had any wisdom for other people turning five…
I said no.
I just love my birthday. I’m so excited about my birthday party.
Wait a minute…Maybe that is the wisdom. Always love your birthday.
Sarah — A Mother’s Reflection
There is something about five.
It really does feel like a time warp. It feels like a threshold.
Like standing at the edge of something you can’t quite name,
but you can feel something shifting.
One moment, you are holding a baby.
Feeding, changing, tending to every need,
And the next, this little being is standing in front of you
with opinions, friendships, humor, and a voice of her own.
My mom always says the days are long and the years are short.
And, I feel the truth of that being a Mom.
But you don’t realize until later that
in some ways, those early days were simpler.
Parenting is never easy. It doesn’t become easy.
The challenges evolve, but so do the rewards.
As they grow, the challenges grow with them.
They develop their own personalities.
They push back.
They argue.
They become defiant.
And then…
Some moments take your breath away.
Moments where you are no longer just caring for a child,
You realize you’re in a conversation with a human being
who has insight, perspective, and something that feels like wisdom arriving through them.
And in those moments,
I realize I raised this little person.
It is one of the most rewarding feelings I have ever known.
She has taught me so much. About patience and about how much more patience I still need to find as the years unfold.
But more than anything,
She has taught me about love.
Not just the love we give her. But the love she already carries.
It’s like she came here knowing it.
Sometimes she will just stop, look at me,
and say, “Mommy, I love you.”
And I see it. I feel it. It’s true in her eyes.
And then she runs off to play again.
I’m left holding that moment, that brief flood of love.
Stories That Stay
There are so many stories. But a few live in me.
When she was a baby, there was a moment, chaotic and unforgettable.
She had an explosive diaper all over me. I was screaming for help.
My mom came running, thinking something was wrong. And then she saw us.
And she started laughing. And then I started laughing. And then Hope started laughing.
Three generations of women…
laughing about poop.
A moment that began in overwhelm
and became something we will carry forever.
And then there was another moment. I was sick.
Really not feeling well.
And she knew. This little girl, still a baby in so many ways,
But she knew. She helped me into bed.
She brought me water.
She sat with me. Not talking.
Just gently petting my head. Reassuring me.
And then she said,
“Mommy, I’m going to take care of you
because you always take such good care of me.”
She is a deeply empathetic child. She thinks and feels so deeply.
Those are the moments.
You realize love is not something you are teaching.
It is something that is already there.
Her name is Hope. That wasn’t accidental.
The Name Hope
That name has a story of its own.
The name came from a dream, a message about needing hope.
My mother was the one who had the dream not long before I was born.
In the dream, her own mother, who had passed before I was born,
came to her and said,
“We have Faith.
We have Charity.
But we have no Hope.
Bring some Hope.”
My mother’s name is Faith. And her mother’s name was Faith as well.
My aunt’s middle name is Charity. My middle name is Hope.
So that dream stayed with me.
And then, when I became pregnant, it wasn’t simple.
There was stress.
There was uncertainty.
There was fear.
I didn’t fully know how I felt.
I didn’t fully know what was coming.
I was facing the reality of raising her alone.
And then, I went to my first doctor’s appointment.
My best friend was with me. I heard it for the first time.
I heard her heartbeat. Beating inside of me. Part of me, but also herself.
In that moment, everything shifted.
The fear.
The doubt.
The uncertainty. It all fell away. And I knew.
I was going to be okay. She was my Hope.
Hope Johnson. Such a gift.
What I Want for Her
She’s turning five in a few days.
Becoming an even bigger girl.
And if there is something I want her to carry with her as she grows,
It’s this:
Know your worth.
Reach for what calls to you.
Trust what is inside of you. Before and after the world tells you otherwise.
Know that you deserve everything. Don’t settle.
Follow your gut. Trust what lives inside you.
Because you came here with something already intact.
And my role is not just to raise you.
But to protect that for as long as I can.
I am learning, alongside her, that children don’t come here empty.
They come here knowing. And maybe part of parenting is not
Just raising a child, protecting and nurturing that child. The knowing she came here with.
Long enough for it to take root.
Pool Party Magic
Closing Scribe Reflection
I sat with Hope a few days before she turned five. She shares a birthday with my father.
There was something quietly profound in that knowing as we spoke. The nearness of her becoming. The echo of someone who had been. Life, somehow, holding both at once.
Hope’s voice carries the simplicity and immediacy of childhood. Where joy lives in pool toys, brownies, best friends, and the anticipation of a birthday just days away. Even disappointment moves quickly through her, making space again for excitement and play. A popped floaty is felt, and then released. What remains is the next moment. The next joy. The next thing to look forward to.
There is a kind of wisdom here that doesn’t need to be taught. It lives close to the surface. Unfiltered. Unburdened by the weight of holding on. In Hope’s world, life moves. Feelings move. Nothing needs to be fixed or figured out for too long. There is a natural return to joy.
Sarah’s reflection reveals the deeper landscape beneath that same moment. The stretching of time, where a single year somehow holds both yesterday and tomorrow. The quiet awareness that growth is happening in real time, even when it feels almost too subtle to name. And the recognition that parenting is not simply guiding a child forward, but standing in relationship to something already whole.
There is a soft humility in that knowing. That a child arrives not as a blank slate, but as a presence. With preferences. With essence. With a way of meeting the world that is entirely their own. And the role of the parent begins to shift—from shaping, to witnessing. From directing, to listening. From holding on, to allowing.
Together, their stories meet in a single truth:
Growing up is not just something a child does.
It is something a parent witnesses, learns from, and is changed by in return.
And maybe even more than that…
It is a remembering.
A remembering, through the eyes of a child, of what it is to move freely between joy and disappointment without becoming defined by either. A remembering that life does not ask us to hold on so tightly. That something in us already knows how to return. Again and again.
And sitting with Hope, knowing she shares a birthday with my father, I feel that quiet continuity of life. How one life completes its arc while another is just beginning to unfold. How love moves across generations in ways we cannot always explain, but can feel.
In listening to Hope, something softens. Something loosens its grip. And for a moment, we are invited back into that same simplicity.
Not to become a child again, but to remember what has always lived there.
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Because every life carries something worth remembering.