Whit, I owe you a 4th birthday letter and I will write it. That’s the homemade cake I made – from scratch! including the frosting! – and the children attacking the frosting before dinner and after having put in the lopsided candles.
It’s been a long weekend here, marked with a surprise 12 inches of snow, my first (and terrible) migraine, tremendous generosity from the Wood family, and a lot of introspection.
Dear Grace and Whit,
We became this family of four four years ago tomorrow. On a snowy and cold night like this one I went into labor. Grace, you were asleep and your dad was at work. I labored by myself in my bedroom for an hour or two, reading Ina May and pacing quietly back and forth. I emailed Matt and said, “No rush, but you should bring stuff home in case you are not at work tomorrow.” In the middle of the night we called Nana, I kissed you goodbye, Gracie, and we drove through deserted streets to the hospital. Whit, you were born a mere 35 minutes after I walked into Mt Auburn. I almost got the home birth I wanted, and for 4 of the 5 hours of your labor I was alone, self-reliant, focused, and calm.
Four years: both yesterday and a lifetime ago. I am happy about so many things and I have so many regrets. I am proud of the way you are both growing into yourselves. It is one of the things I most devoutly strive for: to give you the space to become who you are. To neither crowd you nor impose on you my own hopes, dreams, and concerns. To let you experiment, to have the courage to let you fail, and to celebrate when you pick yourselves up. So much of success in life – and happiness – is resilience.
I regret that I am not more resilient. That I do not bounce back well. For 15 years I have jokingly made the same New Year’s resolution (Courtney, do you hear me now!?!?) : to learn to roll with the punches. I seem to be making no headway, sadly. I am sorry that I am so brittle, so easily shattered. This is not a good quality for effective parenting. I try so hard to be gentle with you – I succeed most of the time, but sometimes I can be sharp and impatient and I always regret those moments. I am also not often gentle with myself, which contributes to how easily I am bruised.
I am sorry that I am such a quicksilver mother. That I am so quick to anger (though quick to calm), so quick to cry but so slow to laugh. You two deserve someone more constant. Someone more steady. So few things in my life are steady – I can think of only one. I am sorry for my profound restlessness, for how woefully inadequately I sit and play with you both. The only thing I do with any comfort is read to you – oh, how I read to you, and now that you are beginning to read, Gracie, I am eager to share with you the books of my childhood. That is one small thing I do do well – reading to you both. But crafts, trains, imaginative play, board games … I am not good at those things, and I wish for you I could be.
I am so nervous about my mother ambivalence, want so desperately for this not to leak out to you both. Being your mother is surely the most important thing I will do with my life, but it can’t be the only one. I am sure that it is better for you both that I am not singularly focused on you – of that I am certain. But I don’t want this multitude of focuses to cause either of you to doubt how deeply I love you. I hope I can manage to show you, to teach you, from my example, that one can wear many coats in life – one can live many lives, not all of them simultaneous but all of them gratifying. I deeply aspire to show you that being many things to many people can be a way to live an interesting, challenging life, rather than demonstrating it as the path to being scattered, broken apart, and diminished.
I know that I am a kaleidoscope of failings and weaknesses. I also know I have moments of brightness, of joy, excitement, and sheer fun. I wish there could be more of the brightness and less of the darkness, but I know myself well enough now to know that wish is futile. On Saturday, as I cried my way through a migraine, you both curled around me, asking how to make me feel better. I told you then and I tell you now – it is okay to cry. It is okay to be sad. To expect otherwise from this world is naive. Please do not be afraid of my tears or of your own.
Grace, Whit, I love you both and I always will. I am certain about so few things in my life but that is one of them. I will continue to try harder to be the mother you deserve as I know I fall short of her now. Hold my hands – here we go into year five.