On March 18, 2011, one of my close friends, Alycia had a baby boy named Khaleb Michael Hall. Yes, I was 16 years old. And yes, I was in the room – attempting to watch the whole thing go down (for some reason my hand kept covering my face), but that’s beside the point. From that moment on, I knew that somehow my life would change. And trust me, I have never predicted something and watch it come more and more true as the days pass. Being Khaleb’s godmother has given me a number of gifts that I attribute to making me who I am today.
The Gift of Patience: Patience isn’t a quality that most 16-year olds possessed. I know that I wanted things to happen when I thought it was right, and that was the only way to go about it, in my eyes. However, having a baby scream at three o’clock in the morning completely changed the way things were supposed to work. Sometimes I even had baby duty and had to rock him back to sleep. As I rocked, I realized that he wasn’t going to go back to sleep until he wanted to. From this and many other long nights, I developed the gift of patience – I learned how to value time and when to give additional time to others.
The Gift of Sympathy: Let’s face it; at that age there is no such thing as sympathy. We used to walk around with an “oh well” mindset, not caring much about anything or anyone but ourselves. But that changed quickly as I noticed baby Khaleb couldn’t communicate his feelings. We had to figure them out for him. The minute it seemed like he could be getting sick, the tears would come. Well, maybe I’m a little bit more dramatic than most. But all of my dramatics worked out for the best. Just ask anyone in my house, they’ll tell you that if he cries – he goes straight for me, all because of the sympathy I’ve gained from him.
The Gift of Responsibility: We claimed to be responsible for such a long time, way before we knew what real responsibilities were. So without a doubt, when this responsibility was thrown my way, I panicked. But sooner than later, I figured out being a godmother is more than just a title, more than just giving gifts on birthdays and holidays, more than what most people think. I found myself watching his every move, making sure that all of his wants and needs were fulfilled. And because of this today, I have someone who begs his mother to talk to me, someone who runs and hugs me when I come home from school on the weekends, someone who smiles when I wake him up in the morning. When you can see that all of the things you’ve learned are worth something, it doesn’t feel like much of a responsibility, it feels like love.
Khaleb has taught me so many things that I didn’t know about myself, and he also gave me the opportunity to grow up the way I wanted. All of these gifts, values, and morals were handed to me in the form of a child. I guess you could say that I didn’t have to learn them the hard way, like most teenagers do. I took Khaleb’s birth as the beginning of many lessons to be learned – and luckily, everything that I hoped for and more has been given to me.