Dear Z.,
There is a postcard on my bedside table that I glance at every morning.
In simple handwriting, it says: Go To Your Edge.
I am encouraged by this card—and its artist maker, your Oma—to love you more fiercely, to offer you more and more of myself when we are together, and to loosen my grip on what I think should happen when you run toward a puddle with abandon.
The card is a reminder that just a few weeks ago, words from you were few and well-rehearsed, steeply-tapered funnels through which all of your nuanced thoughts and desires had to express themselves. It is a reminder that today in the car you were catching words from Ana Tijoux’s new album, Vida, like swirling flies and spitting them out aglow while dancing in your carseat.
At two years old, you live at your edge. You run circles around it, dip your toes in it, tip it over and lick the rainwater from its glossy scales. You listen to the frogs croaking in the tall grasses and ask unabashedly to see them clearer. This morning, you drank raw sauerkraut juice from the container and last night demolished your potato-avocado birthday cake like it was, well, a bowl of rice and soy sauce.
You are a most savory human, Zavian Lazlo, and I love you.
Your mama is away this week, the first time like this since your birth. How you must miss her, and how you must so deeply know that she will come back. That has been her gift: a secure attachment such that few kiddos in this world may know.
May it be unrelenting, son. May your sense of trust be unquestionable. May the connection you feel, and others feel to you, be solid as a mountain and flow like the tide.
Happy Birthday, Z-bird,
your papa—or, as you’re calling me so often now: Sean.
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Sean, this is a fascinating project. I'm writing letters back and forth with my Dad right now on Substack, but to write letters for your child to read in the future is pretty cool. I'm subscribing!