Letter: Monthy Twenty-Three

Dear E,

Watching you grow continues be alternately fascinating, exasperating, and adorable. And at times it’s all three at once. Sometimes I’m struck by the smallness of you, by how little and defenseless you still are and I feel a surge of mama lion protectiveness and just want to hold you close. And at other times I look into your defiant eyes as you’re glaring at me for not giving you whatever it is that you want and it’s as through the years have already streamed by and you’re sixteen and mad at me for not letting you borrow the car.

But fortunately you’re still mostly adorable. Your love affair with the moon continued this month. You still insist that any round object depicted in the sky is the moon, even if it’s daytime and there are cheerful yellow lines radiating from it. N and I realized the other day that since you go to bed at seven and the summer days were so long that you had actually never seen the moon in person. So when we were driving home the other night and saw a big harvest moon we pulled the car over and got you out of your seat and held you up to the sky. “Look, it’s the moon!” we said and pointed you at the sky. You squealed in excitement and shouted “moon!” and as soon as we set you down you ran down the sidewalk trying to catch the moon. You were so excited that you didn’t look back even once.

This last month my mother went to Korea for a month to visit relatives and so while she was gone your Uncle Steven came to stay with us for a few weeks. At first you were apprehensive about having a house guest; I think you thought we were going to leave you with him for babysitting. But once it became apparent that we weren’t going anywhere you quickly warmed up to him, offering him your hand when we were out walking around and giggling when he would plant a kiss on the top of your head. The three of us went to quite a few places together: the state fair, the aquarium, the dinosaur museum, and to the canyons for a train ride through the mountains.

While Steven was here I would get flashes of déjà vu now and then. Because he has special needs and both my parents worked when I was a teenager I often cooked meals for the two of us and shuttled him around in my car and it was at once strange and familiar to be doing these things again after so long away from them.

I didn’t realize it until just now but helping to look after my brother helped prepare me to be a mother in several ways. It taught me how to be comfortable and patience interacting with someone who can’t communicate back as fully as I can. It also taught me what it’s like to be loved with a love so guileless and pure that there simply isn’t any reproach between you–except maybe for the small one you sometimes feel that you aren’t quite the person they already think you are.

Love like this propels me forward into becoming whom I want to be.

Love,

Mama