balloon

dear bunky,

this morning we went shopping at trader joe's, first thing. one of the employees gave a balloon to the little girl next to us, but not to you--so i went to the customer service desk after we checked out and asked for yours.

"what color?"

"yellow"

i had to tell you to look--you didn't know to watch the man inflate it for you. when you saw the balloon expanding with helium, your eyes and mouth opened wide. a full body smile. you accepted your first helium balloon with joyous awe, as if you could not believe you were receiving something so wonderful.

after seeing many pictures of balloons in books, seeing them at the supermarket, at Walgreen's, after pointing them out to me always, here was a balloon for you, at last.

all day you have played with your balloon. running around the house yelling "a-loo! a-loo!", balloon in tow, pulling the balloon down toward you, letting it go, batting it with your hand, teasing the cat with it, panicking when it drifted out of sight...

when i brought daddy home from the hospital in the afternoon (he'd been there for 4 days recovering from a minor operation, his ostomy takedown, which was a cakewalk for him after everything he's been through), you were quick to show him your wonderful treasure.

you had missed him, that daddy of yours, missed him with all your might. you were brave and persevered in his absence, and when he came home, you held out your very best offering. "a-loo!"

a period of rest

dear monkey puzzle,

i have a picture of you on my cell phone. you are wearing your red baseball hat and green jacket and you look awfully grown up. i look at that picture of you throughout the day when we're apart and i feel connected to you.

daddy finished with his chemo last week. at least, we are pretty sure he is done--when his oncologist comes back from vacation we'll know for sure. daddy has another ct scan scheduled for monday, so next week will tell us a lot about what we might expect over the next few months: more treatment or a period of rest? based on daddy's last scan, we are both expecting another clean scan and a few months off, a period of semi-normalcy. you will be happy when daddy feels well enough every morning to get out of bed early and play with you while i brush my teeth and get dressed for work.

you continue to learn many new words each day. i was keeping a list until it became too difficult to keep up. at last count you had over 75 words. by now you have well over 100, i would guess.

you have also started combining words. you did this once a couple of months ago when i left you at daycare. "bye mommy" you said, and surprised your teachers. but you hadn't done it again until recently, when one morning when daddy did not get up to see you you said, "daddy tired." then you saw the cat sleeping and you said "kitty tired". you've had a number of other combinations since then, with "yellow turtle" being my favorite. you are also repeating multisyllabic words and multi word phrases like crazy. and you seem to understand just about everything i say.

you've also started to have some tantrums, and they're really no fun at all. you're usually so much fun and so easy to be around (active and exhausting, yes, but not difficult) that it's a shock when we're suddenly on opposite sides. most of the tantrums seem to happen when you are tired and you want to do something for yourself that i can't let you do (play with the latch on the safety gate on the stairs, for example). as you seek more independence, we will probably see more of these unwelcome flare-ups. one thing about you is that you are dramatic and expressive, and have been since the day you took your first breath.

i had hoped with these letters to write more often and to paint a clearer picture of your early life. but as daddy gets better, i am getting more and more burned out and i don't have the energy to think very well anymore. i use up my mental energy at work, and at home i do my long list of chores at night and finally collapse into bed.

i do give you lot of love when we're together. and you are very attached to me, so i must be doing a few things right. if i am unable to tell you your story in the detail i had intended, i hope you will understand.

rivers and tides

dear pumpky,

where do i even begin? how about with practical matters:

1) you've had a birthday! you're one!
2) you got very sick on your birthday. you were miserable for days and we had to cancel your party. when monday rolled around and the doctor was finally open, i learned that you had bronchiolitis and an ear infection. you had a 10-minute mist treatment with albuterol in the doctor's office (for wheezing, which i couldn't hear with my bare ears, but the np heard with her stethoscope), and got a prescription for an inhaler and antibiotics.
3) you are feeling just fine now and i'm really, really glad.
4) although you've been cruising around holding onto the furniture for months, and taking a step or two on your own for a few weeks, as of yesterday you are officially walking
5) you've been talking up a storm. some of your more recent words: bird, dirty, diaper, uh-oh, star, night-night, piggy, gobble, book, yeah
6) you've gotten to be pretty good at getting food in your own mouth with a spoon, and you have fun with it if you're not in a big hurry.
7) i love you.

and now on to philosophical matters:

daddy and i watched a documentary last night called rivers and tides, about the scottish artist andy goldsworthy. i ordered it from netflix, and when daddy heard what it was he teased me about ordering a "physics lecture." he said i would fall asleep in the first five minutes of watching it. so i wish you could have heard all of the "wow"s out of dad's mouth as we watched the movie.

i have seen pictures of goldsworthy's work before and i always liked it. but it is completely different to see it alive, in motion. a chain of leaves snaking through a stream, a stack of rocks drowned by high tide and then re-emerging as the tide recedes, a line of sheep's wool capping a long rock wall, the wool, in sunlight, a brilliant illuminated line curving up and down and around the line of stones at the top of the wall.

today i keep thinking about this artist's pieces, and the look on his face as he worked, and how sometimes when he was almost done with a piece the whole thing would come apart and he'd have to start over. that happened a few times, and it became clear that that is just part of the nature of his work.

i hope you will watch this documentary one day and listen to this man talk. then you will know something about what it is to be wise. i don't know if he is wise about other things besides the art he makes, but when he talks about art and about making things, he is deeply invested in what he is saying, consumed with undersanding how the elements of his work affect and are affected by their surroundings--wind, water, light, etc.--and time. listening to him talk, i learned something about what it means to look, to pay attention, to understand, to be.

luma's 1st birthday

dear baby bear,

today we went to luma's 1st birthday party. you brought him a dinosaur puzzle and he really liked it. i think it was his favorite toy.

everyone at the party thought you were very cute. and m. also said you are loud, which is true. you are loud. always hollering and banging, but with the best of intentions.

you were the most mobile of the four babies there, and just generally the most active. one of the babies your age stayed on his parents' laps for most of the party without complaining. like you would ever do that for more than 10 minutes. ha!

the more i get to know other babies, the more i realize how engaged you are with the world around you. eager to figure things out and get going. the worst thing i can possibly do is to help you when you are trying to do something for yourself. i am learning to intervene only when i think it's a safety issue, like when you put that huge piece of bread in your mouth today and i pulled it out to tear it in half because the crust was so hard i thought you might choke. you got mad, mad, mad--you pushed and pushed on me trying to get away, rejecting every offer i made to give you the bread back. until i distracted you by turning you around to watch the gift opening. then i slipped you some more bread and let you take your chances.

it's nice to see daddy feeling so much better. this week he went to his studio almost every day to do some recording. i admit i sometimes wish he were doing more to lift the burden off of me rather than holing up in his studio, but i know how much this recording means to him. and it's important to me, too. so i keep my trap shut and plod along and remind myself every day how lucky i am.

the momentum of love

dear snuggles,

i want you to know that i write you letters in my head all the time. while i'm cooking, cleaning the kitchen, filling your bottles and packing your food for daycare, brushing my teeth. but it's hard to find the time to sit at the computer long enough to get it down for you to read one day.

daddy started chemo yesterday. i went with him, just for the first time to see how it will be for him. we were at the hospital for seven hours in a small, drab room with no windows and an overly chatty woman in the 2nd chemo chair nosing into our business. daddy is doing okay so far with the folfiri. he only had a half dose of the irinotecan this time--the oncologist is starting cautiously and will increase it each time until he finds the limit of daddy's tolerance for the drug.

you are happy as ever. your favorite foods right now are hard boiled egg yolk, sweet potato (chunks of home cooked), banana chunks, and plain yogurt. you love feeding yourself, and now that you have mastered putting food in your mouth, you have started to put other things in your mouth, too. last week you found a small mystery object on the living room floor and popped it in before i could intervene. i stuck my finger in your mouth to get it out, but came out with nothing. you didn't choke, so the identity of the particle you ate will remain one of life's mysteries. today i had to fish two things out of your mouth: soggy paper from a magazine ad (you tore out the page while playing) and some orange peel (daddy gave it to you to hold, but you decided to eat it). so we're at that stage now. i hope we both live through it.

i have been thinking a lot about what kind of mom i want to be for you. what thoughts and behaviors do i want to model for you as you're growing up? what ways of seeing the world could i help you adopt that would be beneficial to you in your life? how can i help you see yourself as a strong person, a helper, a contributor, a speaker of truth, an upstanding human being?

i don't have a word for my religious beliefs. other people might call me an atheist, but that doesn't feel right and i don't use it as a label for myself. agnostic is wrong, too. i can tell you that i don't believe in "personal" god that thinks like we do and plays us like puppets. what i do believe is that the laws of nature are the ultimate truth. physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, compassion, empathy, love. i am telling you this because it occurred to me this week as i was standing at the stove that the idea of god that so many people have, a god that listens to and answers the prayers of human beings, though farfetched in my opinion, is no more farfetched than the idea of you being born from nothing but will, biology, and luck. no more farfetched than the experiential arc of a single human life, the bewilderment of existence, the purposelessness of it, the joy of it, the suffering that sits on the sidelines for some and for others dominates the game from the very beginning.

i still don't believe in a personal god.

i do believe in getting up every day and doing the best i can.

i believe in the thrill of small beauty.

in the growth potential of hardship.

and most of all, in the momentum of love.

friendly faces

dear little muffin,

yesterday morning when i dropped you at daycare, you saw a little girl getting out of another car and you waved at her and very brightly said "hi!". that's something i really like about you: you have always been a friendly guy.

today, i stopped at the grocery store on my way to pick you up and felt myself surrounded by friendly faces. everywhere i looked i saw people who looked like potential friends--kind, fun, and funny souls. i don't feel like that very often, but when i do it's a great feeling, like the world is an open, safe place, rich and welcoming. i hope you will see the world that way as you get older. good things just waiting to happen.

you are changing constantly, transforming right before my eyes.

you now have the beginnings of two teeth. one is about half arrived, and it's neighbor has shown up fashionably late and is just sticking it's foot through the door.

you can stand by yourself now, entirely unsupported, for a surprising number of seconds before you teeter and drop onto your cushiony bottom. but only when you feel like it; never on demand.

you are very chatty. you have mastered mama, dada, nana, baba, and are now working on your g's. gaga and goo goo, etc. you can say ball ("ba"), you try to say diaper ("di"), and one day even tried to repeat after me when i said tylenol ("ty-o"). you say kitty ("ditty"). you say hi. you say yeah. and i'm pretty sure you've started shaking your head no and nodding yes, and that those motions in response to questions are not just coincidence.

you continue to be a wet and sloppy kisser, and when you kiss (sweetly suck/slobber on) my chin (always giggling) you seem to enjoy exercising your new teeth.

so much has happened since i last wrote. it's too much to begin to tell.

yesterday daddy had a liter of fluid drained from around his right lung. he seems to feel better now that he has more breathing room. he said the fluid looked like iced tea, and i'm glad i no longer drink iced tea or i'd probably just have had that pleasure permanently spoiled. we are waiting for the lab report now to find out if the fluid shows signs of infection or cancer.

it has been a long and difficult month for daddy and me. daddy rests when he's tired, but i've discovered a new kind of fatigue, a kind of tiredness that sees no end in sight. the words "no rest for the weary" often come to mind as i go about my days.

even still, i feel a remarkable amount of friendliness in the world much of the time. it leaves me hopeful. and i hope that hopefulness is something i can impart to you. or better, i hope your hopefulness comes from within, like a bubbling spring, requiring no effort from you, for all of your days.