Do these subject titles read like order confirmation numbers or is it just me? Today is Monday, March 1st, and this a Dispatch from In Here with an audio recording of the text below, above. You can reply to these emails at any time by literally just tapping, “reply.”
Dear Madeline and Laura,
On the day before your 1st birthday, I wrote a note to myself in an iPhone while sitting in the backseat of a taxi that was headed towards Newark airport. I would miss your first birthday by 5 hours on the occasion of a business trip and while I do not recall if I felt much guilt for not being there, there was a heaviness about my disposition.
On that car ride, I reflected on something your uncle, Henry, had told me about his recent experience of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro with your grandfather. When I asked him how it was, I expected a fiercely sensational response that would reference the emotional resilience and degrees of perseverance that are required to endure the sum of the hike in a sort of benevolently arrogant, I-had-an-experience-you’ll-never-be-able-to-understand kind of way.
Instead, his reply was deadpan and humble. “It was just like walking -- you put one foot ahead of the next and take a bunch of steps.” That’s all he said.
How was it climbing Mount Kilimanjaro? Like walking a bunch of steps. I found this answer enchanting.
We’re all just keeping, or trying to keep our feet moving in the forward direction, aren’t we?
I had been thinking that here, on the occasion of your first birthday, I had this chance to sensationalize how profound and electrifying and intense it had been to be your mom. And it was all those things! It is.
But it has also been remarkably tedious and frustrating and boring and at times, even soul-crushing. This has shown me something significant.
Because it’s easy, you know, to get swept up in the wind of deep feelings. To find the trunk of your tree coming out of the earth and bellowing into the eye of fury or passion or pleasure’s great storm. But if you remember to keep walking through, you get a chance to learn, I mean really know that we’re not here to pursue every thought or especially feeling as they arrive at our doorstep. On the contrary, we’re here to climb. Just keep putting one foot ahead of the other. Eventually, you find a mountaintop. This is not your cue to stop walking, but we’ll talk about that some other day.
On the occasion of your second birthday, I found myself once again traveling internationally for work. You were still too young to recognize my absence as it pertained to a milestone all your own but the heaviness that buttressed the first year of departure had fallen away by now. I did not feel guilt for leaving, but I did feel guilty for not feeling guilty. On the car ride this time, I wrote that down. Why don’t I feel worse to miss my beloved daughters’ birthday?
I made bullet points.
They started as justifications, but eventually made way to truth:
-They’re too young to realize I’m not here
-We’ll celebrate when I get back. They will not have known the difference
-I won’t miss their birthdays once they’re old enough to know when I’m there or when I’m not
-Or maybe I will, but if they ask me to stay, surely I’ll stay
-Won’t I?
-I think so.
-But I love taking this trip -- I used to hate it, but I have come to cherish this time alone. Is this something I should regret? Deign ever to say it out loud? Deign ever to say it in front of them? I love my children and I love time away from them. Can’t both of these things be true? Having this time helps me to collect myself, it reminds me I exist outside of them. Even more, in fact, that they exist outside of me.
Yes, it reinforces that.
For your second birthday, I got to learn that even though you’re here because of me, you are not here for me. Life will take you down various rabbit holes. Some will charm you, others intrigue. Many will disappoint you. Many more will probably disappoint me.
All of that is fine.
You are here to explore the boundaries of your agency. Not to satisfy me, or to please dad or to fit into any neat category that asserts you are anything but what you are. Who you will come to know yourself to be. I will stand by and study and observe you. I will remember you’re you, not me. Or dad or grandma or your sister. And then I will use this knowledge to talk to you, and when it comes time to make your own life -- fill your own prescriptions and leave, my greatest hope is that you’ll have learned yourself well enough to know it’s your own hand that’s writing.
Now here we are, on the occasion of your third birthday.
I’ve thought for many weeks about the great lessons of further getting to know you, but this gnawing sensation keeps stopping me short. It feels like a pair of delicate hands are tickling my collar bones to distract me from the bigger, more rigid hands that are on either side of my chest plate, trying to crush it together.
We experienced and continue to experience a catastrophic pandemic that has altered, in some way, the lives of every breathing thing on earth. There could be a sort of romance about this great connector, but there is an even greater upset. The disparities among us have never been clearer. I don’t know how to explain it yet. I wonder if I ever will.
In my own life, I have closed my business. I have oscillated back and forth between deep regret and utter relief, I have mourned the persona I’ve had to surrender — the woman I tried so hard to become. One with it all! — the big great office, the big great life, the big great mom who can Balance. Balance what?
I have fantasized about who I can become. I have studied my hands. I have begun to write anew. And between these two states, I have yearned.
Yearned for escape
Yearned to be seen
I have yearned for validation
And confirmation
And consciousness.
I have worried that I’m not suited to raise you. I have cried when I’ve nearly believed it.
But I never questioned that I could sink deeper into myself — that in the morning, when you wake up and the unbridled thrill of a replenished young day is painted across your smiles, I could embody the same quality of pure, even virtuous hope.
To watch your fascination as life unfolds has delivered unto me the same fascination. It watered the seeds of interior plants I didn't know were here. It has shown me that hope is not always dumb.
Hope is not afraid.
On the contrary, it can be fearless: the sensation of keeping one’s heart open.
It will expose you to much more pain, at times you will worry you can’t keep on, but you can, I know it for certain. I will sit next to you and remind you that you can as many times as I need to -- that these are growing pains. You’re building strength, putting one foot ahead of the other, and that’s what feeds your hope.
This, the journey, is how you start to bridge the gap between what you wish for and what you can do to go get it.
Eventually, you’ll discover we don’t have to have hope in spite of reality, we can have it because of reality.
Use this knowledge and what comes from it to look after yourselves, each other, and your neighbors. You are here to rise but for you to stay up, you must also learn how to lift. For rising is only as satisfying as bringing your people with you. Keep this the closest of all.
And please don’t forget that your natural wisdom is striking. Your desire to connect inspires. The questions you ask, the feelings you share, the fear you espouse and the love that you give — it's a reminder we’re here together.
I am your mom but you are my teachers and together we learn what it means: to laugh, to cry, to think and bear witness the full range of our separate emotions. To live it in earnest, to be full with life — today, tomorrow and on.
Happy birthday sweet children of mine.
