Yesterday was Aidan's seventeenth birthday.

We bought a small tree, an evergreen that will stand out against the bare winter solitude, to plant in our backyard, next to the other trees that remember him and remind us of his presence.

He changed the path of my life, my understanding of time, my sense of possibility and chance.  Perhaps the best way to capture those changes is passage 22 from the Tao Te Ching:

In yielding is completion.
In bent is straight.
In hollow is full.
In exhaustion is renewal
In little is contentment.
In much is confusion.

This is how a sage embraces primal unity
As the measure of all beneath heaven.

Give up self-reflection
and you're soon enlightened.
Give up self-definition
and you're soon apparent.
Give up self-promotion
and you're soon proverbial.
Give up self-esteem
and you're soon perennial.
Simply give up contention
and soon nothing in all beneath heaven contends with you.

It was hardly empty talk
when the ancients declared in yielding is completion.
Once you have perfected completion
you've returned home to it all.

Happy birthday.