letter (noun)- (a) a written, typed, or printed communication, especially one sent by mail or by messenger, but sometimes sent by memory through time, such as a (b) note to self, although I suppose those are normally written to the future, and this one is to the past, but perhaps it’s just as much to the present me and future me, too

Dear Kate,

It’s the wee hours of the morning on April 19^th, 2017, and I know how you feel right now. I know that you’re breathlessly in awe of the new life swaddled up in that plastic bin of a hospital crib next to you, so much so that you can’t fall asleep. And I know too that you are sorer than you ever imagined you could be; every muscle in your body aching like you just finished the most difficult workout of your life… which, in a way, you did. I know that when the haze fades away, on that too-long day that you bring your baby home, you’re going to be hit with waves of emotion that drag on past the baby blues.

And, Kate? I promise it’s going to be okay.

From my year-out vantage point, I want to reach back and hug you. I want to make you laugh with stories from the months ahead (like when Caleb burps in the silence of a prayer in church!). But most of all, I want to tell you that the phrase “enjoy every moment” is a good one but so is “enjoy every change”, and that one might be a little easier to swallow when you’re taking antibiotics for mastitis or bundled in the dark December night with a croupy baby or chafing against the loneliness of your new stay-at-home-mom life.

You see, Kate, from the minute your son left your body, he started to stop being yours, and started to become his own. It’s an exasperating twist, in a way. For some mothers, the bond is instantaneous, but for you it wasn’t. For you, he was a stranger, and the most amazing part of the last year has been getting to know the unique person that he is. Now, you’re closer to him than you were when he was born, but more separate and distinct, too. And if I had to guess (seeing as I do, because future us hasn’t written yet) this is going to continue with each passing year. It’s what I’ve heard and witnessed in other mothers, so I can only assume this universal will prove true for us as well.

And that makes me think that maybe there’s something in here for future Kate, too. So as a favor to this present and past, don’t look back and kick yourself because you think you might not have soaked up the moments enough. Instead, enjoy the fact that he has become the boy you know now. Celebrate the string of changes from here to there: newborn to toddler to whatever comes next.

-Kate

stranded (verb)— (a) stuck, held fast, or (b) helpless, left in the lurch, or (c) perhaps planted with roots that must go deep, and is that a bad thing, really, if your roots must reach deep enough to find the streams of water that are not always near the surface but can nourish and grow still (and maybe even more)

Time has the tendency to make the most ordinary things sacred. It lends the paths worn by habit and routine a beauty that’s more than just skin deep; a beauty backed by memories and sacrifice and love, like the creases etched in the corner of a momma’s eyes. I don’t understand the mystery behind this, but I’ve felt it more than once; this ache of sacredness pressing in close to daily life.  

I think it must be a universal thing, to some degree, because an author much more eloquent than I once wrote, “For so it falls out that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost, why then we rack the value, then we find the virtue that possession would not show us whiles it was ours.” It's the same idea that's behind more well-worn phrases like “Hindsight is 20/20” and “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards”. And what I think it means is that as our worlds shift and time passes, we’re granted glimpses of wonder… if we look for them.

I’m in the middle of this right now. In a way that’s eerily similar to the life changes we faced in 2012, Eric and I are navigating big adjustments in our personal lives and careers, and we’re moving across the country once again. Depending on your personality, it can be easy to focus solely on either what’s coming or to mourn what’s ending, but I don’t want to do either of these. I want to look forward, yes, but also backward. I want to look all around me, and deliberately call my attention to the sacredness of what God has given me over the last five-ish years.

Since I moved to New York, this place has been wearing deeper and deeper groves on my heart. Schenectady is hard to love most of the time, but especially so in January, when its salt-bleached roads are bordered by heaps of dirty snow, and the bitter air stings my face every time I walk outside. But now, driving these same old roads to these same old places, I’m seeing oh-so-clearly the beauty that has been slowly taking shape.

I’ve built a life here. All of the adventures—easy and good, hard and painful—that I have been gifted with have started from the middle of this northeast city. I knew from the day I arrived here that my walk in this place wouldn’t be long, and I can only be honest and admit that in the day-to-day noise and clamor, that was sometimes a comfort. Life can be so hard sometimes.

But for the most part, that knowledge of time also impacted my living. What most people get years down the road, I was given from the start: an awareness of the virtue of now. And so I invested myself in this place and it’s people as best as I could, knowing that what seemed ordinary and mundane would someday be revealed as sacred when the light of time shone back on it. I didn’t do a perfect job, of course. I didn’t savor every moment. But a breath shy of six years of this and there’s a lot more sweet than bitter in my memories of this place. And in the back of my brain there is a whisper—no, a shout—saying REMEMBER THIS. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

What I’ve known about the temporary nature of these years has shaped the way I’ve lived them.

And this matters because I don’t want to limit this knowledge or its effects to this one facet of my life. I want this to be how I live, period. I want to try to see the stages I find myself in, the situations I encounter, and the roles I’m called to fill as good gifts, not boring routine. In this next chapter of my little old life, my prayer is to live as though I can already see the sacredness that I know is innate in each moment. And that’s my prayer for you, too—the family and friends who have been with me along the way. 

Thank you. <3

No place at last is better than the world. The world
Is no better than its places. Its places at last
Are no better than their people while their people
Continue in them.

(Wendell Berry)