dear future child

 inspired by and in conversation with Ross Gay's Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude.

dear future child, 

driving to school this morning i saw the world wake up. people walking with coffees, small dogs in jackets (i cannot wait for you to experience small dogs in jackets), kids waiting for the bus, construction workers already busy. i avoided turning on the radio. instead – dogs and grown ups and kids and ponds and geese and sunshine and shadow. 

it is a pang, between my ribs how much i do not want you to miss this world. i do not want you to miss the crocuses, or the chamomile, or the rhododendron. the miracles of dahlias and the dandelions. small dogs, big dogs, rabbits hiding in the bushes, cats watching lazily from window sills.

my dear, of all the things i wish to tell you the most important is that  all things change. the early morning mist evaporates, the cold glass of tea sweats, dripping onto the coffee table, which will then rise up and fall once again as rain. we will do this too, child. both your parents, and your grandparents. just like our grandparents did before us. right now, dear one, many things are shaking and roiling, there is quaking in my bones when i write to you.

sitting in class the other day and someone asked what faith means. this, i think you will discover in your own way, is a hard question to hear – and harder still to answer. i thought of you, running with a cricket cupped between your palms while a radio plays news in the background. the endless onslaught of news, or rather, the endless flow of crickets interrupted – 

it got harder to write here, dear child. there are two wells in my belly, one verdant – the other empty and long and deep. there is no bucket that goes from one to the other and all i want to do is tell you about the beans in the garden and the way peaches taste after they’re grilled. i want to tell you about your family and the sun and the stars and the worms in the ground and, i do not know how to tell you about the way my heart breaks – about my fear or worry or lack— 

you will find out, and i wonder if you will be mad at us. that we worked so hard to give you something that is so much worse than we think, and sooner. i wonder what i’m giving you, what you will open your palms to receive? what will you make of all this? our screaming, and our shuddering and our singing and our dancing and our waving and our weeping and our loving? 

i don’t know what faith means, per say. but looking out at this beautiful jagged soft ugly gorgeous untolerable necessary muddy mess and saying, “i believe you might find joy” is enough. today the cherry trees and the magnolias are blooming, and in a few weeks their petals will become part of the soil. beautiful things come and change and enable new lives to take root, and new things to die. i think it’s worth it, dear one. i hope you’ll think so too.