Love Letters to My Little One: Versions of Us

How is your second birthday already knocking on our door? With a snip of a sweet lady’s scissors, your fluffy strawberry blonde curls have littered the floor and suddenly I have a KID. Not a baby, not even a toddler (that I’d come to terms with), but a KID. Just this summer alone, you’ve become someone scary and spectacular and new.

Scary because I’m not ready to kiss versions of you goodbye, not ready for the possibility that the next time you’ll say “yo-get” will be the time you say it correctly. But it’s incredible to watch you become more brilliantly and unapologetically you. The firecracker I can’t let out of my sight is absolutely still the same baby that made a 30-year-veteran nurse stare at me with wide eyes and declare, “I’ve never seen a baby this wiggly in the birth canal!”

In exchange, I hope I’m the version of “mother” you can be proud of too. Despite years of experience with children and childcare, for years I worried I’d fail as a mother. The mother I saw in childhood was one I knew I couldn’t replicate: stayed at home, prepared home cooked meals, life organized around extracurriculars, hosted parties for every occasion, all while makeup and hair were immaculate. Some of these expectations were dashed by circumstance— dual incomes cover what we need with not much room for fanciness, let alone staying at home— but others were my “fault”. I despise cooking, fashion is a bore, and after years of having to open my childhood home to strangers, the idea of inviting people into mine fills me with dread. It also meant that the kind of mom I’d be would be one I’d never experienced, and one that seemed quite inferior.

So I hope the version I’ve become is one you love just as much. One who dreams and dances and delights in the ordinary. The one who serves her community and knows at least three people every time we go out. One that spends her weekends designing sets or taking her pet parasaurolophus around the state teaching kids about dinosaurs. One that has a whole other life after you go to sleep— where she writes and edits and prays— and even before you awake, one that’s having meetings and laying out your clothes and packing your lunch.

I hope by bringing you along on all of this, you grow up to realize that even though your mother couldn’t stay home, she did everything she could to invite you along on a life that welcomes you with open arms. Already you’ve been backstage and onstage all over the state, earned your own nametag at the local library, and known magic in moving and tangible ways.

And I hope one day you'll be able to appreciate all the old versions of me, the ones that had to come first so I'd be the one that became your mother. Right now, you have this routine of asking to play "Jingle Bell Zurg" and dancing with me around the kitchen. Essentially, it's this video of Walt Disney World's Totally Tomorrowland Christmas Show from 2015. What you don't know is underneath some sweltering blue fur and a Santa suit lies your mother. And one day when you're old enough for some of life's magic to look like hard work, I'll get to tell you all about it. But for now, watching this version of you experience a past version of me is its own kind of magic.

Both of us are growing and changing, and I’m honored to be able to do it together.