Forty Months

Dear Persephone,

I meant to take notes on all the crazy things you’ve said over the last few weeks. But time got away from me. I remember you said “Trust me!” when we were playing Alphabet Farm. I wrote it down, because it seemed remarkable, but now I can’t remember anything more about it, except that I’d never heard you say that before, and somehow that seemed profound.

One morning when the car wouldn’t start I carried you across the street to Tommie’s shop. After I explained the situation to Tommie, including how you mother got to work that morning, you had one question: “What’s a damn cab?”

I don’t remember a whole lot more, but in my defense you were gone with your mother for roughly a quarter of the time since I last wrote. You spent a week at a friend’s cabin outside Fishville, Louisiana. When you came back I swear you looked and acted bigger. Just like last year.

Just before that we had the countdown to your last days of daycare ever. But I already told you about that. Since then you and your mother have been on summer vacation. I continue to work, but I get a vicarious sense of leisure from you two.

Maybe this would be a good time to mention something you said a couple months ago, which I never recorded. While I was putting you to bed one night, the topic of human mortality came up somehow, and you said, “But I don’t want to die!” I’ve never tried to hide the concept of death from you, the idea that all living things pass away, but I felt for you right then, and deeply. You sounded genuinely afraid. That old fear of death is a universal, and it’s been a mighty emotional force in my life. In fact the only thing that’s taken the edge off that fear, for me, has been you. After your birth, death and dying has seemed a little less scary to me. But that’s hardly something I’d expect you to understand at your tender age. So I said to you, “It’s OK, baby. Nobody wants to die. But it’s not anything you need to worry about for a long time.” I hope that was a good thing to say.

We made a return trip to Vero, Florida, with your maternal grandparents. I can’t begin to describe how magical it seemed to play in the surf with you. There’s something pure and purifying about the action of the waves. So many other distractions are forgotten, and we’re challenged to be most fully present, when a surge of ocean water is threatening to knock you down and wash you away. Actually you still get distracted and you’d have washed out to sea if left to your own devices. But I tried to get you to pay attention when a big wave was bearing down. Seemed like a valuable life lesson.

You were excited to celebrate the summer solstice, which we did today. I was thrilled that you seem to understand the idea of the solstice. “It’s the longest day of the year!” I’d promised we’d make a wreath, Bohemian-style, but travel and lack of planning on my part put that idea on hold. Instead, we frolicked on the beach and constructed a giant sun symbol in the sand, which the rising tide soon washed away. So that was sort of poetic.

Happy Midsummer, baby.