kellyinrepeat

Quinn, you are the only kid left that I write letters to publicly. Your siblings have “real” lives now and our connection through these letters feels too intimate for blogging. As it is, Luke still hasn’t forgiven me for things I published about him when he was eleven, so I will try to keep this as mild as possible. You really do reap the rewards of being the baby in more ways than you know and Luke, if you are reading this, I am sorry a million times over (first pancake out of the pan, kid … takes practice).

I am writing this on the eve of your big day. I asked what you wanted and you said Mcdonalds, so I appreciate your limited palette and cheap taste. Despite the stress and pitfalls and chaos of this past Covid year, you have remained steady, healthy, and curious. You have started to teach yourself to read music and play the keyboard. When I asked if you wanted lessons you said, “What for?” You went on to explain that there are so many ways to learn besides “lessons.” So you sit, in what was my meditation room and then a temporary summer bedroom for Lizzie, and now an empty room with makeup stains on the floor, and with your headphones on, and teach yourself.

You are already off to a much better school year than last year. You love to design on Tinkercad. You are actually even loving science because you get to research and design and sculpt and animate your own hybrid creature. You are reading more, investigating more (and here is where I will hold back from sharing our after school discussion about puberty today… though for anyone curious, there was a ladder and a subway that made their way into that hilarious exchange). Last night you jumped out of bed to do an assignment you had forgotten about, which included creating a gif. So in addition to teaching yourself, you are teaching me new things.

You remain pretty impressive with your ability to read energy, to offer reiki, something I really hope you don’t outgrow. You have a fantastic giggle and for some reason, each time you think about how I told you that my grandma used to make us liver dumplings, you laugh. You are still not fond of fruit or vegetables, lotions or toothpastes, and you still eat the same chicken burrito for lunch, along with some black olives, every single day.

I started teaching again this week and have been thinking a lot about a Tik Tok I watched in which a psychologist said, “As children your job is to abandon your parents a little bit at a time, and Parents, your job is to let them.” For some reason this year I am feeling that extra hard. Luke, Elizabeth, and Will are fully immersed in their own lives and you and I are still here, but again, you are the baby, so you teach yourself piano and eat pepperoni and a dill pickle for dinner in your bed. I am not chasing anyone to lessons, watching any theater shows, taking anyone to practices … no more long weekends of volleyball in other states (amen to that). It’s just us and it’s quiet. You tell me jokes that are actually pretty funny, but otherwise you are content to be by yourself. There is peace and ease about you that has lingered ever since you made it out of the incubator and decided to stay.

I love everything about you.

Eleven is an angel number. May all of your many angels be with you this year and always. I know you feel them.

One decade ago I was in a hospital room. Catherine had come the day before with as many high caloric baked goods as she could find, in an attempt to fatten you up. She hung Buddha babies that looked like sumo wrestlers on the walls to provide fatness inspiration. Earlier, Adrianne came and made a salad, bedside, with fresh figs. Grandma made cinnamon rolls for the nurses. All of our attempts to keep you in a little bit longer failed, but I think the love behind it saved you anyway. Instead of spending time on my phone, researching IUGR baby or pre-eclampsia, or geriatric pregnancy failures, I stared at the Buddha babies and I played the song Ballerina on repeat (“I’ll never feel the weight of your hands inside mine like diamonds lace so fine ballerina
cupcake and my earthquake wakes me from my sleep that never comes, are you breathing waiting for me”). This is how I pray. It has some how rubbed off on you, my reiki master ten year old boy. Four months early, you were born, weighing 480 grams, 11″ long, the size of a chipmunk, with a dimple in your chin, kissed by angels on the way down. Nobody wants a Christmas birthday anyway (I mean, Jesus maybe, I don’t know).

I have been thinking about your birthday week all week because it reminds me that I have done really hard things in my life. This school year has been kicking my ass and I am only eight days in. Still, 2010 was the hardest semester of my life. Leaving you behind in that hospital room, walking down the hallway of shame, returning to students and three other children that I could not begin to focus on … that was harder. Somehow that is what is giving me hope now. What made that time period bearable was community.

People say you were born a fighter, but I think you were born a peacemaker. You are an artist through and through. Your bedroom walls filled with detailed, meticulous drawings. You love going to the crystal store to pick our rocks for reiki. You talk to Archangel Gabriel … all very sophisticated things for a boy who still calls the day after tomorrow “tomorrow tomorrow.” You have zero interest in learning to ride a bike, but are a master scooter rider. You eat a Trader Joes burrito for lunch every single day. You will not eat fruit of any kind, unless you count tomatoes. You don’t like juice or smoothies or yogurt, or candy (unless it is chocolate), but you do like tuna salad and black olives. You love Youtube, which if you ask me, is a character flaw. Despite your dislike of sports, you love gym at school. It is the thing you missed most during quarantine.

Speaking of quarantine, I often wonder how this pandemic will shape your point of view as you get older, You are already bummed that we could not go to Great Wolf Lodge (I am secretly joyful about this) during the summer. I can see your heightened sense of loneliness in the way you approach group dynamics. It is subtle, but it is there. Many years ago I asked you what your favorite emotion was and you replied, “lazy.” That side of you is there too. You are a cuddle bug, a lover of blankets, your bed, and sleeping in. You hate hair gel, toothpaste, medicine, mint, and the barber who shaved your neck with shaving cream. Regardless of my fears about our current state of the world, knowing that you chose to stay, knowing that you are a peacemaker, gives me a lot of hope. As you grow into this chaotic place remember to stand up for the underdog, to fight for what you believe in, to protest injustice, to only use “lazy” when you are really, really needing to. Look at the world from a lens that is outside of your own bubble. Peacemakers and artists have a responsibility to follow the lead of their hearts. You, dear one, will have no problem doing just that.

Tonight, like every night, I tucked you in and sang our song. Try not to get worried, try not to hang onto problems that upset you, Quinn, Don’t you know everything’s alright, yes everything‘s fine …” I asked you what the best part of being ten will be and you replied, “The Pink House,” (our secret dream plan) and then I asked what might be most challenging about ten and you replied, “forgetting nine.” Right there with you, kid. I will keep nine right inside my own heart and in the heart of this letter so that years after I am gone, you can still hear my voice singing our song.

I love you, I love you, I love you. Happy Birthday.

I was pregnant at twenty-four. This is not computing. This is not computing because today, you, my first born, are twenty-four years old. All I see when I think of it is a giant infinity sign, looping between us, dancing. Here we are again, Twenty Four. Full circle.

I have spent the last hour or so looking at pictures of you growing up and what strikes me is that there is something about ones mid-twenties where we start to kind of come into ourselves. We start to own who we are. Like I said to you on the phone tonight, this year, I believe, will be one where you reclaim, or perhaps claim, your true physicality. Suddenly all of the pictures of you as a boy look just like that … you, as a version of the self you are to become. Today’s pictures look like your essence, like you are learning to take your own light and make it shine.

When I was twenty-four we lived in Walkers Point in a huge unfinished ground floor loft on 2nd and Mineral with no furniture. We had a big futon bed on the floor and more space than any house we have lived in since that time. We slept until noon or one most weekends and complained when restaurants stopped serving breakfast by the time we got there. When I was twenty-four, the internet did not exist. We did not have cell phones or computers. We had one small TV and we rented VHS movies from time to time. I was twenty-four when I took my first teaching job.

I hadn’t planned on telling anyone I was pregnant. I really was kind of at a loss about the whole thing. I had to tell Grandma and Grandpa because we went over to their house for dinner one night and Grandma was bleaching the sink and Grandpa was making shrimp and the smell of those things together just about made me faint. Pregnancy nose. I didn’t know how much a nose was capable of scent until that pregnancy. I anticipated that my parents might be disappointed to learn that I was pregnant. I was wrong. They jumped up and danced and shouted hooray. Since then, since that very first announcement of you, everyone in our family has had a soft spot for you. You have invited us in since shrimp dinner.

I didn’t imagine then that when you turned twenty four, we would be in the middle of a pandemic. I didn’t know you would be living in California, two thousand and fifty six miles away from us. I could not have predicted the level of uncertainty and chaos that our planet is in. Despite that noise, I find my ground in you. You are my roots. It seems, I suppose, like it should be the other way around … that our parents are our roots. For me, though, my children hold me together. I can feel, from the center of my belly right down through the ground, the tangle of roots and stories, the map of me, that stems from you. I cannot imagine a world in which you aren’t at its center. Even as I branch off into new endeavors, I only find the courage to because of you.

Happy quarantine birthday, baby boy. If in my journey since twenty-four, we have invented the internet, Zoom, FaceTime, Netflix, and all Apple products, imagine what will happen in your next quarter of a century. Fall into yourself. Own it. Be you. I love you, as I do every year, beyond measure. Nothing compares to you.

The tree is down and the angels are packed, both the kinds in the boxes and the ones back on planes.

I sit, decades after first becoming a mother, and am aware of Empty.

Aware that the sound of silence includes no footsteps from above the dining room ceiling and includes, instead, an annoying hum.

It takes a minute

It takes a minute to realize that that the hum is not a void, but, instead, an invitation. One that sighs  I have shown you the caterpillars and seeds and even the trees and still you stubbornly grieve that this is an ending

A hum

Or is it a drum ?

Come, they told me,

Pa rum pum pum-pum…

A hum

Or is it a trumpet?

A newborn queen to see?

Pa rum pum pum-pum

I pause. Weep. Sing Willie Nelson and miss my grandma. Anything to distract from my own angelic dive

Toes gripping to what was,

The top of the tree so comfortably familiar.

I hear the blare of your trumpet, Hum. I hear the beating of your drum. I hear you loudest when you whisper, when obligation and anticipation have vanished and the pulse of the house is on pause.

Your  patient, prodding invitation is the voice of angels

The ones no longer packed in boxes. The ones waiting to catch me when I leap.

Ahh, Quinn, happy birthday number nine. It was so good to come home to you after dropping the last of your siblings off at college. I don’t think I would be quite ready to be an empty nester completely. When I drove Will to Michigan I listened to every episode of Justin Long’s Life is Short podcast. I discovered that Kevin Bacon was also only nine by the time his older siblings had all left home. It must be so strange to live half of your childhood with the flurry of activity that comes from a house full of brothers and sisters and the second half in “only child” mode. Kevin Bacon seems to have turned out okay, so I am not too worried. You did crawl into bed with me last night though. I think the house was just a bit too quiet for us both.

Recently Luke texted me this image of you and me from the beginning, nine years ago this week:

That is hard for me to imagine and I am not quite sure how I managed the grief of it all or how I possibly went back to work ten days after an emergency c-section. Trauma can be funny that way I suppose. We block out the terror in order to function. When I think of that time all I think about is the stillness that resided in me. I went through life’s motions while feeling like I was on pause.

I am so absolutely grateful to you that you chose to stay, that you chose me as your momma. At nine, you still love to draw and to sculpt … you asked for tape for birthday. Honestly, I think you went through twelve rolls of tape last week. You still love cozy blankets, stuffed animals, Toy Story, Scooby Doo, Octonaughts, and YouTube. The Youtube thing drives me crazy. I will never understand what is entertaining about watching grown ass adults play games, but you cannot get enough of it. As far as food goes, you love chocolate, fettuccine, sausage, and black olives. On weekends you never get dressed. You sit, in your underwear, wrapped in one of those cozy blankets, and you make stuff with the tape and watch TV.

You remind me so much of Luke. He, too, loves television and movies. We have Luke home for a bit. You think he is the coolest. He plays loud music for you and you said that the coolest thing about Luke is that “he is Luke.” Dad and I always call the two of you our bookends, and Lizzie and William “the middles.” It is funny how that worked out, how the similarities lined up even though you are fourteen years apart. I am happy to report that Luke now dresses when he wakes up, even on days off, so I know you will get there.

I think about how much has transpired and transformed in these nine years and I am hopeful that our lives continue to be blessed with love and adventure and I look forward to creating the second half of your childhood with you. I hope it just gets richer, more colorful, more tape filled, more delicious for us all. When you were born I didn’t get to hold you. I only caught a glimpse of you as they rolled you away in your incubator. I noticed the dimple on your chin and I knew that angel kiss to be a sign of your resilience, your magic, and your determination to make this life a beautiful one. You certainly have added beauty to mine. Happy birthday, dear boy. You are the light of my world and I love you to pieces.

Last week I was texting my aunt Lori and she relayed some sad news to which I replied, “Did she die?” Lori texted back, “So far not dead,” which made me giggle despite the sad. I told her that “So Far Not Dead” would be a great title for a memoir and she said she would sell me the rights.

Summer is supposed to be my time to paint, but I have been too sad to paint. Joy has not found me this summer, which causes anxiety in all new ways because it’s my only time off. I cannot write that without tearing up because I know that school is around the corner and I know what that means. It means investing 100 percent of me into others. It means I missed my window.

Plus each night I go to bed surrounded my giant canvasses stacked up against my wall, paintings that did not sell from last summer, have nowhere to go, and it’s hard not to roll over and think “Why bother? Still poor.”

Yesterday something happened. I watched an eight year old boy be humiliated by his swim instructor and something in me snapped. It has been the third time in a row this summer that I have witnessed an adult authority figure embarrass a young boy. I had to pause and ask myself why this keeps showing up for me. I got in my car and shouted to the universe to stop showing me how much people suck. There is really nothing in the world that brings me to a boil more than watching a child be threatened by an adult. Nothing. It’s my zero tolerance line.

Yet none of the other parents watching this incident seemed to flinch. They didn’t even shift in their seats with discomfort. Even last time, at the toy shop, where the mother kept screaming at her crying son, “You are so annoying. You annoy me. I will whip your ass right here you are so annoying,” did anyone else flinch. I had to walk out of that toy store and throw up. I texted Susie, “How does anyone survive?”

In my mind I wanted to tackle that mom, to taser her, to, if nothing else, kneel down at the boy’s eye level and say, “What’s the matter, honey?” It made me think about how Grandma Jean used to sigh and say, “These things happen until one of them kills us.”

Yet so far, not dead. Chris says maybe it keeps showing up for me because It is a reminder that women hurt boys in ways that don’t get talked about a lot. We forget that denying that story and enforcing girls as being hurt by men keeps women in a culturally weaker state be enforcing the narrative that girls are victims and boys aren’t. “It sucks,” he said, “Needs to be addressed culturally.”

I don’t know if I can shift an entire culture. Maybe I can. I dunno. My mind has been racing with stories about times in my own life in which I felt or witnessed humiliation or abuse. I could go all the way back to pre-school when my mom bought me a pair of khaki pants. Twin girls at the Little Red House school teased me about looking like a boy. I was three, too young to know who Marlene Dietrich was.

So with the lack of painting I have decided to begin to log these accounts on an illustrated Instagram feed. My goal is to untangle for myself the stories that reside in me that make me feel small. Maybe these short stories will make you feel inspired or connected or maybe you can just be my witness. Maybe together we will make a cultural shift. I was debating about committing to this and then two things popped up on my feed. Russell Brand posted an Ursula Le Guin quote: “You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit or it is nowhere.” Also, my dad posted a New York Times article, Who Will Teach Us How to Feel? In both instances, I felt my arm shoot up in the same way it did when I sat in the front row of all of my college classes. I will. I will be the revolution and I will teach you how to feel.

So here I am. Feel free to follow and heart and share, or comment. Collectively, as witnesses, a revolution: https://www.instagram.com/so_far_not_dead/

xoxo

kelly

“It must happen to us all…We pack up what we’ve learned so far and leave the familiar behind. No fun, that shearing separation, but somewhere within, we must dimly know that saying goodbye to safety brings the only security we’ll ever know.” – Ricahrd Bach

For your birthday I bought you a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It wasn’t on your wish list, but it reminds me of you, my ambitious dreamer. I am naively hopeful that maybe you will keep it next to your dorm bed in Michigan. You are likely envisioning a much different dorm vibe.

Forty days. You leave in forty days.

When the three of you were little and I was feeling overwhelmed with the weight of motherhood, I would  count how many more years until you, my youngest back then, were eighteen, and I would breathe a sigh of relief knowing that I would only be forty-eight, plenty of time for me to live a life of my own. Then, a decade later, Quinn came along and that whole idea went to hell. Kidding. It just took a happy, scenic route detour. At least that is what we will tell him. Wink with me now, play along!

I am stunned at how quickly eighteen and forty-eight actually did sneak up on me. All three birds, outta the nest. Here I am. There you are. Cream rises, I guess, because despite how hard it all was, you have grown into the most charming, funny, introspective, handsome young man. I credit part of that to my own growth, part to a killer Montessori education, but most of it to you. You have known, since before you had words to articulate it, that this life, this world, was gonna be meaningful for you. Bach writes, “You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.” You, William, have the unique quality of having drive, but of also simply living, being. Maybe it’s your methodical math brain mixed with your creative design brain that makes you tick like that, but if you ask me, it’s your heart.

I love that you know yourself so confidently. I love that you are Lizzie are going to the same college and that you have found a best friend and confidant in her. At eighteen, you are a good listener, a reliable friend, not too cool to watch The Bachelorette with me just so that we can delight in its Twitter feed together. You have an incredible eye for detail (even when you were small you would complain to me about typeset that was off), a natural, enviable sense of humor, an endearing longing for adventure.

Letting go of you comes with its own challenges for me. I know you are seeking a life that includes things like skydiving and pushing your physical limits and I am going to do my best just to let you fly. Bach’s advice: “When you have come to the edge of all the light you have and step into the darkness of the unknown believe that one of the two will happen to you, either you’ll find something solid to stand on or you’ll be taught how to fly.” I love that image … “the edge of all the light you have.” It is how I will continue to imagine you. Glowing, believing, taking leaps, and growing into the vision of yourself that has been there since before time. I am so proud to be your witness.

Happy eighteen my love. Still my caboose. Don’t tell Quinn.

I love you.

Mom