Dear Reese,
I wonder what you’ll read someday about this moment in history. They edit textbooks and bend truth and I wonder if you’ll be like me — so sure that the most important battles had already been fought and won. The greatest country in the world, they told me. But when I believed that I was a child.
I do not know what to tell you about it. I’m lost every moment I think about the news. My world narrows when it’s just you and me eating breakfast for dinner at the kitchen table. I don’t think about how the country wants to erase my friends, wants to erase me. I don’t think about the conversation with my boss today, on who we might need to help if they find themselves with visa statuses upended or citizenship statuses revoked. I do think about how I need to figure out how to pack food for you to take to daycare when I don’t even pack a lunch for myself.
(Your teacher asked me at pickup, a note of hesitation in her voice, if we were doing solids at home. Thank god I could say yes, but maybe not enough? She says I can bring in food for you that they’ll give you during the day and it’s so sweet but it’s the second time a teacher has brought it up in the last month.)
I feel achingly not enough tonight. There is more I should be doing for the world. More I could be doing to make you proud. You won’t care that before I get into bed the kitchen is clean, but that’s something.
You spit the first ounce of your dinner bottle all over my sweater and later when I carry you naked from the changing pad to the bath you pee on my jeans. I don’t mind the laundry. I sing Taylor Swift’s “Tim McGraw” for your first lullaby and you roll on your belly to fall asleep. That’s how I found you at daycare pickup too, sprawled belly down in your crib with your pants off (the room was too hot). They have mirrors built into the cribs and your teacher tells me you get distracted playing with it before going down for naps. They called it your mirror time and that, like your Aunt Z says, definitely makes you your mama’s daughter.
I wrote in my planner an intention for the week on Monday — “Find a touchstone. Be a touchstone.” I knew, for many reasons, I was going to need a grounding this week. I want to be that for others too — when the world is shaky, you need to find steadiness somewhere. Maybe my touchstone is writing. Or my D&D game I led for an hour over lunch today where my party took out the zombies infiltrating the Pinestone town square. Or my tart cherry juice mixed with club soda I drink as I wind down in the evenings. My friend Ashley called it a sleepy girl mocktail — take with magnesium.
I give you an extra kiss on the head tonight before I leave you to your dreams.
Love,
Mama