I Want Another Yesterday

Dear Z.,

Last week was your third birthday. How fiercely you approached it, your vocabulary, physical strength, and determination expanding like supernovae daily. In the three weeks you’ve been in forest school, your and my immune systems have taken a hit, but you’re coming home with stories and capacities that just freaking floor me.

Instead of a birthday cake at your party, which by all evidence you might have just spat out, your Oma instead arranged a stack of ten croissants, which were devoured with fig, raspberry, and strawberry jam. Gifts hardly made an appearance; your friends were there and what could possibly matter more.

Just a few minutes ago, as we cuddled in your new sleeping nook upstairs, I was reflecting silently how writing letters to you feels so different now that your language skills are fully online. You don’t anymore repeat every word I say, instead, you say, what? what? until, I think, you understand.

And so many of the things that I would say to you in these letters is now passed between us in real time, and I think you know these moments because there’s a way you calmly look at me for a long, long time, and I look back at you, and it isn’t play, nor boundary, nor instruction, nor inquiry, it’s just seeing and being seen.

In a generation of parenting where so much instruction and encouragement for us the parents is around getting clear about my agenda and making more space for you, your experience and humanity, I feel a deep mutuality in these moments we share. Sometimes it’s at the dining table in your Oma’s cottage, and sometimes it’s at the big river, or under the almost-full moon in the bright cold evening.

In these precious moments, my role as father fades away slightly, and there we are, two humans on earth, for now, together.

Yesterday, after one such exchange, I asked what was happening for you.

“Have you seen my green tractor with yellow wheels? It can really move some mud!”

And what can I do but kneel to join you with the steamrollers and the backhoes and the excavators to move some mud together.

Here’s to your fourth lap around the sun, monkey.

Love you more and more each day,

Papa