Thirteen Months

Dear Persephone,

You might have thought I was going to stop with these monthly letters once you made your first birthday, but I’m going to keep going. I’m not sure how long I’ll continue. Your first hundred months might be a better target. But who knows? I’m winging it.

When I look back to my very first years of life, I find little but a blind spot. I’ve got few memories of those early years, so aside from a few parental anecdotes and photographs and maybe a home movie or two, they’re pretty much a mystery to me. I feel like my life slowly emerged from darkness. Your mother, on the other hand, has a much more vivid memory of her earliest years. I don’t know which of us you might take after in this regard, but I hope these letters will give some illumination to this time of your life, if you should desire it.

That’s one reason I’m keeping at this. Here’s another: This gives me a regular opportunity to imagine your future self, because that’s who I’m addressing here. I’m imagining who you might be at age ten or twenty — or even my age. I think that’s a useful exercise somehow. You can’t write me back from the future, of course. At least I haven’t received any letters from you yet. Still I hope to provide a window into what was going on in my mind when you were very young.

You are growing by leaps and bounds right now. Every few days you seem noticeably bigger. I suppose the biggest news is that you’re walking. You took your first tentative steps almost a month ago, and you’ve been gradually and steadily increasing your range and improving your balance ever since. There was no single moment when I could say you started walking, but you’re definitely walking now. And already it’s opening up new vistas. Suddenly you’re no longer interested in putting your face in the cats’ water dish.