Wishes

Some days, reality hits me while I am folding laundry. Like a wandering dog, my mind slips into daydreams speckled with my many wishes for you.

Today, I daydreamed of sitting at the table next to you, when I am fifty and you are twenty-one. I imagined sharing a cup of tea with you – adding cream and stirring in honey, checking the temperature, lifting the mug steadily to your mouth, tipping your head back so you can swallow.

My wish is not that you grow up to be a doctor, or a caring father, or a musician or that you travel the Earth. Today, my wish for you is that one day, when you are older, you will still be able to hold your own cup. 

Simple, unassuming, unequivocal. A wish no mother should ever have to wish.

In moments like these – and I catch myself in them dozens of times a day – I am met by my greatest enemy: the harrowing emptiness that lurks, the thud that lives in my stomach, weighs heavy like bricks, sounds like a drum, pounding loudly, its reverberations threatening to consume me.  

But then, I see the creases on your wrist, I notice your light blond hair with tints of red, the dimples on your elbows. And your eyes that turn bright when I walk in the room.

As quickly as it came, the daydream fades. I am left with you, who I have, who I love, who I will love forever, and all of the socks, strewn about the floor, wishing for their match.

Dandelions in spring

This week was filled with fragile things: easter eggs of many colors, dyed by tiny hands, and tiny bones, too feeble for their age, fractured on too nice of a day.

Laszlo, when they say your bones are weak, I hear something different. I hear that your mind is a beautiful thing, that you need sunshine on your face and bone broth in your belly. I hear nettles and oatstraw, red clover, dandelion, and comfrey. 

I hear that where your arms and legs fail you, there are so many waiting to help you along. To show you how to play and how to explore, how to watch for the birds and dance in a mid-summer rainstorm.

And how to eat the dandelions in spring.

Love,
Mama

These days

Dear Townes & Laszlo,

There are days when the southern county calls to us. We pack the car with extra clothes and wet naps, with granola bars, swim shorts, and towels. We visit the sweet spot where your Papa and I spent many days over the humid, never-ending summer when we first met.

Back then, we hiked barefoot. We swam until the last glimmer of daylight disappeared behind the rocks. We walked along railroad tracks and picked flowers. These days are not so different, except now we have the two of you as our guide.

This year, Townes, you are the most adept I've seen you. You glide with ease over uneven ground that requires of me the most careful footing. You pick me flowers and turn over rocks. You find treasures and creatures: salamanders, mealworms, crayfish, snakes, feathers, and stones. You dip in and out of the water with ease. I barely have to keep an eye on you. You are your own explorer.



Laszlo, you explore in your own way. You gaze up at the sky, notice the birds singing in the trees. We dip your fingers in the water and you look up at us, surprised by the cold. You feel around with your hands, learn to know the feeling of the soft earth under your body. We give thanks that this spring, your body is still small and light, and we are able to carry you back to these sacred spaces where love has grown.

It will not always be this way, I know. These days are unique, but in every instance and circumstance, in every corner of the universe, nothing will ever be the way it was the day before. It is with this knowledge that we make the choice to celebrate this day.

Love forever,
Mama