honored by your honesty
the onset of summer, now featuring toddler
Dear Z.,
On our recent Colorado trip, kids and gremlin relics abounded. Whereas Rafa fought you for his toys with loud words and gestures, you simply took them, attached your name to them, and refused to yield.
These were some of your loudest screams. I measured a few. I imagine many parents know the sensation of 2500Hz at 120dB, source six inches from eardrum. 2500 Hz is a high-pitched falsetto. 120dB is the loudness equivalent of a jet engine at takeoff.
The sound turns to static somewhere inside the middle ear, and can be followed by quick movements in the listener, away: me, abandoning my mission to buckle you fully into your car seat, for example, and perhaps—unfortunately—slamming the car door, to recover my hearing elsewhere.
Some of my work as a parent is to let you have your voice. It sounds funny to say it like that, as if I could take it away. No one took mine away, per se, but I was shushed and ignored enough times over enough time that eventually I started thinking twice before asking—a hesitation which in time bore its own consequences.
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People keep telling me to write down your turns of phrase, otherwise I’ll forget them. These letters are meant to help remind me of some things, but when I arrive to write them, the most prominent memories are of our moments of connection: the wild up-down-whip arounds, the arm swings, twirling together, you in my arms, in the salon room til you say dizzy! and you land in the sheepskin on the couch, saying ‘gain!—and you cuddling up to me at bedtime, your brightblond hair in my face, my hand around your belly, waiting for Max Richter to sway you, or both of us, into sleep.
Not long ago, you said, I don’t like it, after I’d turned you upside down. You were up-side-up again when you said it. I was so honored by your honesty, your willingness to express a boundary, not so unlike Quyana communicates to you by licking or yowling when you’ve crossed her. I said to you that I wouldn’t do that anymore without asking. You seemed to take it in for a moment, and that was that. The next thing commenced.
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In Estes Park, you and I climbed around the excavator and the bobcat in the rain outside the Himalaya restaurant as we waited for curry and momos. The construction site was possibly more magical than all of Rocky Mountain National Park, except perhaps for Alluvial Fan, where you spent hours next to the waterfall moving pebbles with your handheld excavator.
That is the thing right now: excavators, steamrollers, dump trucks, fork lifts. The road crew working a few blocks from out house has seen you every day for a week plus, and one man gave you stickers today.
Today, we are headed to a “fest-i-bal” in Northern WA. As requested, we will likely listen to ‘Baby Beluga’ many times before we arrive.
Then, the next thing will commence: Summer Solstice, and all the joy and abundance and loud expression that it may bring.
Love you much, little one.