Guest post - 54 months

Dear Jack,

As you can see, your letter is quite late. This is dad by the way. As I type this letter, mommy is reading Christmas books in an effort to lure you to sleep. When I got home from work, you yelled my name and told me to run to the kitchen. When I got to the top of the stairs, I could see the source of your excitement. You and mommy had built a pretty awesome ginger bread house today and you were only allowed to eat it when I got home. Over dinner, I asked what you had done today. You responded with telling me about how you guys had gone to the park and played. Then you came home, built the ginger bread house, and then played a game called Towers where you build a tower from blocks,and then smashed it to the ground. As we ate dinner tonight, I reminded myself of two things. Number one being how awesome of a person you are becoming. I love spending time with you when I get home just so I can listen to all of the things you did during the day. Your vocabulary continues to astound me. That, and you are quickly eating me out of house and home. I know this will only continue to get worse the older / bigger you get. The second thing that I thought of tonight is how awesome of a mother you have. I love getting pictures from her during the day showing me the different adventures that you guys get to go on. I think these adventures are going to shape you into an awesome human being when you get older. For instance, you got up the other morning and your advent calendar task for the day was to give out 10 dollars to random strangers. You were quite proud of yourself when you gave a dollar to the nurse at hospice. Mommy also took you to the animal shelter to donate another dollar. Grace and humility are traits that I think you will attain via these lessons with Katy....and I think she's also teaching that to me as she continues to be my wife. I'll go ahead and tell you that it's not secret that I married up. I know that because people tell me this all the time. All kidding aside, I only hope one day you realize how lucky you are to have a mother this loving, tender, and warm. She's been an awesome mother to you, and the best friend I never would have imagined I would have. I love you both with all of my heart. Sometimes I will be stern with you, and sometimes you may not like me.....but you will ALWAYS be my first priority. I look forward to watching you grow into a man. This is going to be an awesome ride.

Love Dad.

P.S. You're getting a guitar for Christmas this year. Just giving you the heads up.

Dear Jack,

Time slips away much more rapidly when things are good. I'm tired, wrung out, and happy and a week is over, like that. Wash dishes, prep dinner, read books, play games, lie down, get up, listen, shout, cuddle, sing. It all tumbles around into a span of seven days (or 30) and you are a boy and I am still a mom but I look older and the dishes are waiting and I meant to sign you up for that thing but I didn't so we'll just wait until next year and we'll have meatless dinner because no matter how many times I ask you to close the freezer it doesn't jog my memory to the chicken which must thaw. You ate the onions that you chopped yourself and you think it's hilarious when people pretend to struggle with simple things. You used to say "fumb" and now you say "thingers" and it's one of only a handful of things you get wrong but it's so right I'll never correct you - the correcting comes and it always comes quicker than I expect. All those parenting tricks that you denied me a couple of years ago work now, like mirroring your feelings, validating your struggles, offering you rational alternatives to the irrational thing you want. Four is an age of wonder, discovery, and self-discipline. You don't have it yet (psst...neither do I), but you've opened that door, apologizing sincerely for wrongs, anticipating the consequences of your actions, saying wishful things about being together forever but starting to understand that living things die and that dying is real. You talk a lot about death and I talk a lot about wanting to raise you to understand the natural cycle of life but in those moments it's just talk because I want to shelter you and shelter myself from loss. You're curious and I'm committed and we talk and talk and I answer through tears sometimes because I am learning to live with the questions and the realities, too. You ask me if all mommies take shots and take medicine and I tell you some do but you aren't satisfied with that so I know more questions are coming and I'm happy that you are a compassionate person. You busted up your face and we had it glued back together but I got impatient and pulled off your bandaid, with it the glue and half of your eyebrow and it's the kind of story I'll always tell because I'll always feel terrible. When I apologized to you in the dark that night, you said "you're always so nice to me, Mommy, it's okay." Breaking and healing my heart in one fell swoop - you're really good at that. It's in those moments I realize how sacred the trust is between child and parent and it reveals so much about so many people and how that trust can help deliver you into your big, adult world, or how it can, when broken, keep you down, keep you static. May I never, never, never take it for granted and may you never, never, never forget it. Being your mom is the best thing I've ever done and learning to accept that is going to make the rest of my life better, I just know it. It isn't about what I was doing before, or what I thought I might do while parenting, or what I imagine will happen when things change in the future. It's okay that I am your mom and that is my life's work and when I see you trying new things and speaking kindly I feel like I'm doing a bang-up job. I couldn't love you more than I love you and that's a fact, Jack.

Dear Jack,

You are 51 months old. It's silly to count in months now, but I'm doing it to keep track of how long we've been at this thing. 4 1/4? Maybe that's better. You seem taller these days and I can't help but get your hair cut short which makes you look about nine.

Today was picture day at school. I'm really excited to see how they turn out. Your grin is super cheesy these days and I won't be disappointed if it is documented for posterity in an 8x10 and 16 wallets. School is better. You still grumble a bit about going, but you seem to be hitting a stride and talking more effusively about things you do there. Mrs. Gantt told me at pickup last week that you were "very amusing." I can only imagine that you told her a tall tale or did some crazy rhymes. You're also getting much better about playing independently in our new house. Relief.

You continue to narrate everything in third person, past tense. Two blobs of play-doh have epic battles. They scream as they are smooshed through the fun factory. If we ask you "What did you say?" you get shy. I love that you have this rich (if a little violent, er, adventuresome) life in your mind, and I hope you never lose it. You may not like to draw or color, but you are one creative little guy.

We've met wonderful neighbors to share this part of the journey with and I'm so relieved that I can make good on the promises I made for more playing outside and more neighborhood friends. You're talking of our old house less and less. We're getting settled in, and starting to live here all the way. I love it.

It's a good season for me, too, learning how to set boundaries and involve myself in things I really care about and can do well. I want to keep this neighborhood a great place for you to grow up. I want to help your school succeed. I have a big space in my heart for people at the end of their lives. I'm learning how to minister with my presence. Slowly, I let go more and more of the need for approval. Peace with my disease as it stands comes in miniscule but real increments.

When my energy flags these days, I can and often do have these ugly, resentful thoughts about how I don't need to relive my childhood! I did it once! I don't want to play dinosaurs anymore! I yearn for siblings for you, and mourn the passing of the opportunity to nestle a bunch of babies close together. There is green, green grass there, around the big family I once imagined. I feel guilty that you won't have a brother-friend. At least not in the normal way. I grieve for friendships that will change when people we love move away.

And yet.

I'm certain that my energy would be flagging all the same if I were sitting at a desk (where the grass is also greener, of course) and I wouldn't have you to kiss me, or tell me a really bad joke, or sing for me, or beg me to play Legos and even though all of these things at some time or another represent a hard choice for me between lying down (which seems so very necessary) and getting my bones up to be with you, I am keenly aware that the choice itself is a blessing and the place I am is where I am to be right now. There isn't another way for us in this short season. I will turn my face toward the light you emanate. I will get up and blow the bubbles and push the swing.

I meditate on this and all I feel is gratitude. Thank God.

Oh, and thanks for bringing it back,

Your loving Mim

Dear Jack,

You're 50 months now. I have let go of the feeling that I need to post on the 10th. It's part laziness, part fatigue, and part I don't feel like I can put words on paper (or pixels on screen) when my brain is fried. But I'm here today and I'm writing and that is good enough.

Guess what? It finally stopped raining for a bit and I fell headlong in love with this new homeplace. All of my insecurities and frustrations had been compounded by being cooped up inside while it poured for a fortnight or two. The sun broke through, and now, NOW I remember why I wanted to live here in the first place. We've taken long and short walks in the field across the street, swum and splashed for hours in the pool, eaten fresh vegetables by the bushel from the garden, and met new friends. It's not perfect, of course, but I see us all really growing into this place and I picture a slightly older me being relieved that ours is the house on the corner where the kids hang out.

You still struggle to be alone in any room in the new house. There have been a few breakthroughs, and I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge them. You'll go the bathroom solo now, reminding me first to "keep your ears open, Mommy, in case I need you." Bless you, child. You're getting there. On that note, you stopped calling me 'Mim' and I'm a little miffed.

You're not excited about school. It draws up a mighty sea of mommy-guilt and self-doubt for me, of course. My ambivalence about your five-mornings-a-week schedule is mostly a reflection of how difficult/wonderful it is for me to watch you grow up. You don't have to be in school. You don't have to go five days. The truth I know is that even if you don't go to school, you'll still grow up. I can't keep you young and often sweet and mostly portable forever. I'm wise to remember the relief I felt the five mornings of VBS last month when I had a couple of hours to stretch my arms, plant and build things, make lists and check things off, take silent trips to the grocery store, and feel like I have something to contribute besides mothering. It's an important and holy job indeed, but I like to remember some of the other stuff. So, school will be good for both of us, and I predict that you will very much enjoy being one of the older kids in class this year. I'm excited about what you'll learn.

Yesterday you finally found a good climbing tree. You've bemoaned the loss of your tree at our old house (a dogwood that you were swiftly outgrowing, by the way). We have a lot of mature hardwood trees with branches way, way up. I told you to wait and keep looking. Your dad and I were busy picking figs on a big tree when you found your way up as high as you could go. You kept pointing us to a "fig party" here and there under some leaves. I was feeling full up with joy, overflowing even, as we picked fruit and brushed off mosquitoes. After much refusal, you finally decided to taste a fig. You loved it, as I predicted.


If we're patient, Kid, we'll find the climbing trees and we'll taste the good fruit.

Love,

Mama

p.s. A couple of weeks ago, after a really long day with no rest time, you fell asleep on my lap, in my arms, on the bench in our backyard. It was pretty exquisite, the knowing I had in that moment, that it was probably the last time we'd be right there, where I could still lift you and take you to your bed, where we both fit on the bench. I found myself trying to memorize, again, the weight of you in my arms.

Dear Jack,

You're four and one twelfth now. There's a term used to describe rigorous training and I think it applies to our last month: you've been putting me through my paces. Age four has brought a few terrific things and a whole lot of weariness. I decided tonight as we tried unsuccessfully to take an evening walk in our new, wonderful, so very walkable neighborhood that you just can't hang for a whole day. Though you get plenty of sleep in terms of hours, it's most often interrupted, fitful, or simply incomplete due to an early wake up. You won't nap, so we can forget about making up for a deficit during the day. So, despite the fact that you are often fun and delightful throughout the day, you have a witching hour from about six to seven p.m. and there really is not a thing that can please you.

Except ice cream. I bet ice cream would work.

Well, it's all developmentally appropriate, called for by experts and the outward symptomology of some really important intellectual growth, yada, yada, yada. The problem is that I have a witching hour, too. It basically coincides with yours and we're no good together these days. Our recent move has you clinging pretty close to me, casting an ironic light on my worries about us appropriately attaching after your difficult birth. Ha! I laugh at you, new mama Katy, worried about the wrong things.

The stressful move I alluded to in your last letter was about to get a whole lot more stressful and costly. They say all's well that ends well, and I suppose that is true, but some of it is still raw. Again with my expectations and my fractured reality. Perhaps I'll learn one day. We live in our new house and it is lovely and one day we will be able to afford furniture and pretty plants for the yard.

Speaking of fractures, your cast was sawed off today! Apparently you saved all your crying and complaining over the last four weeks for that moment. You giggled at first as the saw vibrated your arm, but you freaked out when the air hit your skin. I've never had a cast, but I think I know what that sensation is like. Unsettling, at least. I was excited about free arm day, but the doctor thought that though your break has healed, it's too new to take a chance and we'll do a splint and bandages for two more weeks. I'm so ready to move on, kid, but you're okay with it so I have to be okay, too.

You're still calling me "Mim," all the time. I have to admit that I love it. It's different, it's weird, and it's you. You matter-of-factly said this the other day, "Mim, don't you know I always keep track of you?" That's particularly true these days, with the new house and its levels. You want me to stay on the same floor as you. It's cute and it's annoying. Real talk.

Every ten minutes or so you tell me you love me. A recent favorite is "Mim, you're the most most most most most most most most best." Most best? I'll take it.

A very different Jack will be reading this letter one day, so my apologies here may be unneccessary, or even silly, but I feel like I need to say I'm sorry. I am struggling to figure out how to be your mom in this season, and I get it wrong a lot. I know I do, and those moments sting. Sometimes I feel like you are telling me you love me all the time because you need reassurance and that thought is too much. You know I love you but I want to make sure you feel it, even when my anger or fatigue take over my ability to be peaceful. It's work, it's work, it's work. It's my main gig right now and I feel lousy at it.

This too shall pass, I know, and quickly, taking with it some of the great things about now - your sweetness, over-the-top enthusiasm about pedestrian things, your precious baby cheeks.

I will try to slow down to enjoy those fleeting things a little more. I will choose peace as often as I can.

I couldn't love you more, kid, paces and all.

Mim

p.s. We are petsitting, Gillie until school starts back. It's been pretty fun and you've helped me take care of her. Good things.

About a Boy

Jack, at four:

-grouses about the pink plate, but only if he remembers to
-reads voraciously, even though he doesn't quite read yet
-competes endlessly
-favors the color "golden"
-tells me things in steps (usually four)
-struggles mightily with disappoint
-is always, always listening
-asks questions that are often hard to answer ("What does probably mean?")
-invents engaging dialogue
-obsesses over video games
-measures 40 inches
-weighs 38 pounds
-stares at girls with black hair
-super-sensitive schnozz
-needs reassurance that book or movie characters will be okay in the end ("Will Peter Rabbit find the gate, Mommy?")
-talks endlessly about star wars, a movie he's seen just once
-would drink chocolate almond milk all day long if allowed
-forgives quickly and fully, an example to us all
-comes up with real throat-catchers ("I love you from moon to moon and earth to earth.")
-understands a lot
-doesn't understand as much as we sometimes expect him to
-is a good eater
-doesn't take care of his toys very well, loses things
-gets dirty, really dirty, all the days
-has taken to calling his parents Mim and Did
-speaks invented languages fluently
-calls hammocks "panics"
-loves to run
-can be mean, but only a little
-immensely excitable and terrifically enthusiastic
-wants to be a racer "a person who explores in the jungle" when he grows up
-will probably be both
-is impatient
-enunciates and contextualizes grown up speech brilliantly and hilariously
-wets the bed sometimes
-loves ear lobes, or "earies"
-heart breaker
-arm breaker
-deep thinker
-goofball

For a variety of annoying and stressful and unnecessary reasons, I missed this post for your birthday. I'll tell you about it one day, kid, and I hope I'll be able to laugh about it then. I wouldn't be surprised if you remember it. Suffice it to say that our world is a little bit chaotic right now. As always, you're a champ. I'm taking my cues from you this time.

I love you,

Mama

Dear Jack,

You're 47 months old now. Four is on the horizon! It's Mother's Day, 2013. This time four years ago, I was preparing to meet you. My due date was approaching and I foolishly thought that you were making your entrance at any moment. I had miles and miles to go (uphill, all around our neighborhood) before you came into the world, smacking your lips and impressing the hospital staff with your enormous feet.

I entered motherhood in a chaotic way. My peaceful pregnancy ended with a battle, one I now know I may not have had to fight, but fight I did to bring you forth - to finally meet you. Sometimes I think your birth has me rattled still, in the way that any unmet expectations can leave a person floating through reality missing (and perhaps always searching for) hard ground for her feet.

The hard things I remember are few - a few desperate (literally) sleepless nights waiting for you to wake and nurse, feeling like a wound was open when I'd leave you, screaming, with Gram so I could take a shower, rocky times with your dad when his job was at its most demanding when I needed him more than ever before. These are brushstrokes now, or threads in a tapestry that becomes more beautiful everyday.

Parenting is just this way, or it has been for me, light and dark always weaving together. Your being-three-ness can be immensely frustrating at times. I suffer alongside you. I hurt for your little heart that I know breaks over the smallest things. At the same time I want to escape during your lowest moments. Motherhood at these times feels very much like a set of trials. Surviving them is success, simply. Staying present is the highest aspiration.

And yet...

Your being-almost-four-ness is a complete joy. Your unending questions now have more focus. You affect an amazing LOW voice and angle your chin down, as if peering over reading glasses to say things like, "You know," and telling jokes about a Transformer turning into a banana peel (hilarious). You're thriving at school, despite still being a little miffed when you have to leave your toys and books at home to go there. You're on a team with three other boys who run and run and run during playground time. I love to hear about team dynamics. There is a boss who fires you on a whim but apparently rehires you. You have to do math to be on the team. You're convinced that certain shoes are faster than others. The goal is to chase the girls, whom I'm not convinced are actually playing with you. Fascinating!

You're growing, having leg pains now and again, looking leggy in the shorts that were past your knees at the beginning of the school year. You look older and older, run faster and faster. I've said it before, and I think I have about one more year to say it, but each day you look less like my baby and more like a real, live boy. Your knees and shins are covering in scrapes and bruises at various stages of healing - your "summer legs." You climb to the very top of your climbing tree and I imagine you up there scouting for the next challenge. You lip-sync every song on the radio, whether or not you know the words. Your air-guitar a sight to behold.

Mommy and Daddy are not leaving well enough alone in about a month: we're moving. We have loved living in and raising you in this house, but we want something different for you as you move into the next phase of your childhood. We've found a great house in an older, established neighborhood. You'll be able to play much more freely as you grow. We'll all be able to bike and walk more easily. We're closer to the heart of the city. Big changes are coming, and I expect you to weather them with immense grace. You will probably be a great help to me, actually. If all goes as planned, we'll have a small birthday party for you in the new house. I'm excited at times and ambivalent at others, but when I allow myself to picture an older you playing in that neighborhood, I feel peace.


Here you're standing in the green space across from the new house.

Hooked on you, kid.

Mama