Dear Santa,
For Christmas I would like an American Girl doll that looks like me. Here are other things that I would like: Puppy, iPhone, and an adopted sister.
(And a whole lot more that I forgot.)
Love,
Georgia Miller
Editor’s Note: 1 out of 4 and a new pair of socks.
When girls turn 9 quite a bit begins to change and you may no longer see so intimately eye to eye. Then you realize they’ve been waiting all their lives to have the high ground under their feet.
Me: You are growing so much! (With poorly masked dismay over the rapidly outgrown clothes, the discarded toys and the little girl lost.)
Her: Maybe that means I’ll be a normal-sized person some day!
***
I don’t have to tell you that she already fills the sky and outshines the sun, but normal is good enough too. Normal will do.
A letter to my daughter on my birthday.
My dear heart,
It is customary in these parts to post letters of reflection on our children’s birthdays. But at my age and altitude, a birthday is everyone’s birthday and I can no longer split the difference.
There were stirrings that something was up with you of late. A scurry and hush as I walked into your room. The scattered remnants of things cut out, disassembled, refashioned. You assured me that I would love the present you were making for me, if only I could wait.
This was new for you. Not new to make something, no that isn’t new. But to make and keep a secret of your own. To guard yourself so well and to let excitement crest in your own sturdy chest.
In the morning I came into the kitchen and found the surprise you had snuck overnight onto the center of the table, mimicking every birthday of your own, starting the party at dawn, because not one moment of a day so long awaited can be wasted.
I found a box.
Inscribed with the curious glyphs of a language you now own:
Decorated with pictures of your friends and family, the people and the places you inhabit with and without me:
Labeled emphatically with the contents, the contents that cannot be named or contained:
Opening it, I already know that everything is inside.
I love my life.
At the end of the third day of third grade, her teacher looked at me and said, “You have a happy child.”
OK. I’m feeling more empathetic today.
You do your best. Try to raise ’em up right. Keep your eyes open. Go with the flow. And then you’re plucked from the relative calm of total obscurity only to find out your kid has done something you’ll never live down.
Eyewitness courtesy of Kathryn and Claire.
On the twelfth dawn of the eighth month, lifting the shadows of the darkest hours that came before, blazing through nine revolutions and counting.
This is a snapshot of Georgia, at two, dressed up in what had been my honeymoon nightgown. She claimed it from my closet, where I had let it become dusty and discolored from disuse.
That just about sums it up.
But not really the whole of it, not the best and most of it. Look at her coy and come-hither loveliness. She’s a decoy, my daughter, a decoy luring my husband and me to a place far gone from the honeymoon, a place of love and respect that is no romance, to be sure. But honest, and difficult, and workable. Serviceable, handy, constant, everyday.
That reminds of this post, which I present as a tribute to the man I love.
(I wonder what kind of hopeful, insistent, half-obsessed mother put the potty chair right there.)
I know I said I was going to be posting old stuff while I was away at retreat this week, and I suppose I yet will. But here I am on the cusp, the razor’s edge, of another year passing. When I come back next Saturday we will be days away from celebrating my daughter’s 9th birthday. It is a miracle, but no greater miracle than any other day. Once you get in the miracle business, you see, they just keep coming. Since I am spending a good part of my time missing my family this week, you can join me as I post pictures of what you’ve missed so far.
Here is Georgia Grace as she appeared at her premature birth in August 1999 at 34 weeks of gestation. We would soon pity the parents with those behemoth, 6-pound babies in what appeared to us to be the nursery for run-of-the-mill king-sized kids. They seemed so – how can I say this – big. But she was fine; she was ready for this. As many of you have witnessed since, I certainly wasn’t.
The thought of this day, and every day since, makes me tear up in amazement. There are many parents who know more keenly than I do the cruel afflictions of early-term birth. I weep for the inconsolable impossibilities. And in our case, I weep for the possibilities. I weep for the whole unknowable universe of it. The waiting and yearning, the coming and going, the missing, yes the missing, reminds me of this post, one of my first, which remains forever true. I’ve never lived any day or place that I wasn’t waiting for her all night. Missing is what it means to love.
It was supposed to be about 115 degrees today but it wasn’t. I’d heard a rumble about it for days. But this morning I shivered under the covers. Outside, a morning breeze danced on my bare arms. I figured it would all ignite at mid-day, but by evening we had a cloak of clouds and a tease of sprinkles. This is the kind of thing I take as a gift, a charm, a fortune. Lacking any other kind, it will do.
A little respite, you see, an oasis in the crossing. I just finished a tough writing gig that had me on my knees for weeks, inching forward through the drifts, making up words about a topic so suffocatingly arid, so dense and intense, that it could only be called “work.” I burrowed into the clattering bones of it this afternoon, wrote a little bit more and shocked myself by being done. A gift, a charm, a fortune. Lacking any other kind, it will do.
We knew it was dying, one of those troublesome turtles that required so much coddling care that I couldn’t help but come to love it. It had stopped growing, stopped eating, stopped moving and then tonight Daddy pronounced it dead. “Mommy,” my daughter called, “Can you light some incense?” She adorned the burial box. My husband turned the earth. She placed a stone and I said the chant. A gift, a charm, a fortune. Lacking any other kind, it will do.
For Jupiter, my good turtle
***
Please remember to leave a comment to enter my giveaway of The Maternal is Political. A gift, a charm, a fortune. Lacking any other kind, won’t it do?
It’s amazing what happens when you ask.
GG’s Birthday List:
Acoustic guitar
Dachsund puppy
New smaller DVD player
Ears pierced
World peace
Room re-arranged
Bunk bed with sofa
Pink room
Wii
And what doesn’t.
What are you asking for right now?
If I tried too hard to understand it, I might miss the view.
From a hand-drawn sign taped to my daughter’s bedroom door.
Aquatic Center
of what I like and love
Love
TV
Acting
Movies
Friendship
Art
Dogs
Like
Turtles
Tests
Friends
Pink
Blue
Fish
And like that, school’s out.
Time packs up its fractional interest,
its dewey decimals
and skips out of this slow motion town.
The hair, the shoes, the smudgy silver lunchkit are
suddenly so
last year.
The endless days might seem to stretch
but not one
not even one
will keep its shape.
Who can refuse to enjoy the view?
My Poem
by Georgia
When I was a child
I was quite wild.
I banged my head on a piece of metal.
Years later I got stinging nettle.
I won a huge award.
Our dog had surgery that we could hardly afford.
