Letters to my children: Berry season

Letters to my children: Berry season

Dearest Beloveds,

When we lived in Michigan I thought the 5 pound boxes of blueberries one could purchase were obscenely amazing. I would eat blueberries for a week straight, until my tooth enamel yelled at me to stop (too much acidity).

Now we live in New York, with pick your own berry farms surrounding us and I realize that obscene is not the word. The words are glory, bounty, lavishness, profusion, cornucopia, richness, or abundance.

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Mourning

When my father died, everyone told me (those who have lost a parent), several things with much repetition on certain themes. The first year is the hardest. Grief comes in waves. Sadness will hit you out of the blue and take your breath away. Losing a parent sucks and your life will never be the same again. I was told I am lucky to have adored my father and that he was a good man.

So far so good on all of those.

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Letters to my children: De-pod-ing

Dearest Beloveds,

I am not sure if this should be spelled depodding, or depoding (rhymes with coding), so I am going to embrace the over utilization of the dash and go with de-pod-ing. (Un-pod-ing sounds even weirder).

De-pod-ing (verb) - to de-pod The act of untangling the psychological, physical, and emotional rules/barriers/mandates that have been in place since March 2020 per Covid-19.

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Letters to my children: Complicity

Dearest Beloveds,

There are times when I think about the lessons your father and I are trying to teach you and I feel proud. To look in someone’s eye when they talk to you, to not give up before you try, to share our allowance with others who have less, why we turn the lights/fan off when we leave a room, how to take turns, why it is important to eat salad etc etc.

Other times I am not so proud - this morning was one of those times.

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Letter to my children: Why do Baba and Meme live with us?

Dearest Beloveds,

The subject of this letter was in my original outline that I wrote before Baba died but the sentence sounds better with a double barrel as opposed to just Meme, so there we are.

Meme lives with us because when your Momma was in my early twenties I helped Meme put Grandma (her mother) into a series of assistant living and nursing homes.

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Letter to my children: Axes and Extinction

Dearest Beloveds,

It has been a while since I wrote because we have been all over the place in terms of doings. Our RV trip to NM, your Dad taking off time for us to split wood, our first trip on an airplane in 2 years… the past two months seem to have flown by.

And here we are, the glory of spring has passed and it is now summer weather.

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Letter to my children - On Sex

Letter to my children - On Sex

Dearest Beloveds,

When I was growing up I had an anatomy book in which I obsessively reread the reproductive pages. Having a sister, I don’t know if I was obsessed to see the rendering of the male genitalia (so OUT there compared to my discreet slits) or it was seeing the pictures of the tadpole sperm encircle the egg so fanatically.

The book was very good on XY chromosomes but skipped over the mechanics.

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Letter to my children: Dinner Games

Dearest Beloveds,

I know I need to focus and go back to the outline I made of what I wanted to cover for you two in these letters, but I feel this is super awesome and I don’t want to miss this.

There are three games we are currently playing at dinner: I Spy, Animal Vegetable Mineral, and Guess the Number - each with their own vagaries, shall we say. I Spy is fairly straightforward.

Dragon, “I spy with my little eye something yellow.” Then we all guess and can usually figure it out fairly quickly.

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral involves partners because sometimes the items can be tricky.

Bean and I will drum on the table and sing while the Dragon whispers his to Dada.

Bean, “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.”

Dragon, “Animal”

Bean, “Do we eat it?”

Dragon, “No”

Bean, “Does it have four legs or two?”

The Dragon will look at Dada in confusion. Dada, “I think four legs.”

Dragon, “It has wings and drinks blood.” (Darling, for some reason, after more than 2 or 3 questions, you always jump in with a huge hint.)

The Bean smiles hugely, “Is it a mosquito?”

Dragon, “YES! A squito!”

The Guess the Number game has changed the most since we started playing it a few months ago. It used to be that one player would have a number in their head between 0-20 and the other players would guess. The player with the number would say higher or lower and eventually the number would be revealed. Bean, with your math learnings, you have changed the whole equation.

First, you share the new rules, “Okay, so come up with a number between 0-50. Momma, do you have one?”

“Yes.”

“Is it an odd number?”

“Yes.”

“Does it have a 4 in it?”

“Yes.”

“Is it 41?” I nod no. “43?” I nod no. Your voice and face get more and more animated as you circle round the number and hone in on what it could be. “45?”

“YES! You did it! That is amazing! I love how you honed in on that so rapidly by using your noggin. Such good noggin work!”

It is incredibly impressive Bean to watch you use your math prowess to approach the numbers game in such a new way. I can see your neurons firing so bright and that is awesome.

This snapshot of our current life, so grateful I am for you both. Thank you for being my beloveds.

Letters to my children - Calendars, Inaugurations, and Healing Lemons

Over winter break Bean you made a calendar. Twelve (which we learned recently comes from the fact people used to say, “one, twoo, three”) different pages were filled in by you with the correct number of days (from our month of the year song), starting on the right day of the week (from our days of the week song), and decorated with seasonal doings (or birthday cakes if that was appropriate). As such, every morning we cross off the day before and you tell me the day, date, month, and year. I find it really fun and so far it seems, so do you.

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Letter to my children: These are not normal times (and yet...)

Letter to my children: These are not normal times (and yet...)

Dearest Beloveds,

Before I dive into the list of what makes this time so different than any other time on our planet… I want to relive the morning with you.

First, it is an odd day (as in today is the 11th), so the Dragon gets to open the door of the advent calendar. After finding a snowplow to attach to one of the Matchbox cards (thank you Mimi!), you both wanted to put on your Colombian dancing outfits from last year’s talent show.

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