Dear Z.,
We drove too much coming back home from the coast and going to the wedding and home again. You did not want to be strapped in for so many hours. I really get it, and I am sorry.
We are both discovering where your limits are daily, and I appreciate your growing ability to so clearly articulate them—often, with your palm, pushed out in front of you at chest level, like a stop sign. Sometimes, with your whole animal body, writhing, screaming for freedom.
You express outwardly how I feel within more often than anyone may suspect. You are brave, little one. I love that about you.
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As your grammar becomes more precise, so do your requests: can you put me out of the straps PLEASE. may you carry me up the stairs? will you pick raspberries with me? may I bring my bulldozer and my bobcat inside? will you make me a bite with toast and avocado and sausage and egg, please?
And my favorite phrase, which you say a dozen times a day or more, and whose origin, to me, is a mystery:
You do your bits. I do my bits.
You and I have been sniffling for weeks now, since gathering with our friends in the Oregon Coast woods. Other parents tell me that’s just what it is to have a kid: everyone’s always got something.
I’m so grateful you came through in post-pandemic times. Most of the kids who are older than you had a rough go of it in the couple of years before you were born. While you will know that for yourself long before you read this letter, I want you to know that your mama and I are doing our best to raise you without fear of humans, and also to listen to your body—and theirs.
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You told me your first story tonight. I held you in my arms, as I have done a few times a week since your whole body fit between my palm and elbow. Per our post-bath ritual, you and I gazed in the mirror, mostly at you. You determined aloud that you were Zavian, that I am Sean, that mama is your papa, and who is your mama?
You are too big for the hooded towel that covered you like a parachute two years ago but that now barely covers your feet.
Once upon a time, you said.
Instead of whisking you off to put on your jammers, I paused, stepped my foot up on the short vessel-sink counter, and shifted your booty from my elbow to my knee. You spoke.
The story, as best as I can re-tell it:
Once upon a time, there was a fox. Once upon a time there was a house. The house on a truck. Went into the dark. It was frustrated with the trains, and did not like the dogs. The house on the truck traveled to the cemetery. There was a big moose there, eating grass.
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I love you, Z.
doing my bits,
Sean