we wish to welcome you to nine years old

Dear Hank,

You are nine!

You are a revelation, a genius, a firework.

You are a human party favor and a mood ring of a boy.

You are morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably our favorite munchkin!

What a big week you've had, your first real theater experience. You're already pining for the next show. It was a mom dream come true to see you on stage with your biggest brother, and I love that you seem to have caught the acting bug!

Nine years in and I'm still astonished by the material fact of you - half me, half your father, half divinity. The math does not add up, the inexplicable wholeness of who you are, but here you are, doing your own calculations, listing more than one hundred ways to make change for a dollar.

And that sums up your presence much of the time, just talking. Thinking out loud, narrating the day. You with a funnel to my ear, pinning me down to pour in numerical wonderings and novel analyzations, bad dreams and song lyrics and entire retellings, endless curiosities.

I love your bouyant optimism, plus the way you're comfortable being moved to tears by music and words. I will never forget how your hair bounced with your body as you skipped across the stage in Munchkinland. You have a remarkably sweet, handsome face - secondary to the soul that dwells behind your smiling eyes. I love the way you chase a good time like a dog chases its tail.

You had ice cream cake with grandparents and pistachio cake with neighbors and Crumbl cookies from friends, and we are not done celebrating yet!

It is my immense privilege and my very honored pleasure to parent you, Hank!

Love,

Mom

you are sixteen

Dear Tucker,

This year you will spend another birthday on stage!

While you are far from a billowing bale of bovine fodder, we cannot wait to see you play the Scarecrow in Oz all weekend. And we will keep the birthday candles away from your costume ;)

It's been a real gift to have a front row seat as all of your talents emerge.

You are sixteen and six feet tall and nearly sovereign. You can drive a car and write a convincingly persuasive essay on Blues music, you can balance a chemical equation and clean your fish tank fairly thoroughly. I love that you still ask for help with things like laundry and locating "lost" items, that you let me make you hot tea with honey in the morning. You are lean and muscly, hormones having burnt off any hint of baby fat, but we both know your behavior matters way more than your appearance.

You have the biochemical blessing of a bright disposition, steadily radiating goodness wherever you go.  Your peers, and their parents and your teachers, recognize kindness in you. You have surplus stage presence, and confidence in almost any situation. You stand with your feet planted, naturally unafraid of taking up space in the world. But also with arms and eyes and ears wide open to opinions and possibilities... You know there's not a bible verse to explain everything, you know the universe is large and fascinating and mysterious; I admire both your spinefulness and your comfort with uncertainty. 

You've got so many gears turning. You have a great sense of humor, and an interesting accumulation of random facts. You are skilled at pleasant conversation and also fine hanging out in comfortable silence. You are such a giver: a thought, a chance, a damn. Feeling like you don't know who you are all the time is okay too, it's part of growing up and paramount to being human.

Into what shapes will you push the straw of your body next, I wonder? I promise I'm trying to shut off the advice valve and just listen... You are wise and intelligent and can trust yourself to make good decisions. You have a marvelous brain and a generous heart and courage to spare. And we could not have more love for you.

xoxoxo Mom

:: gestures widely :: there's also all of this

Running lines and launching balls and rehearsing vocals and plucking strings, there's so much music and art and science and church.

I like collecting it here in one place because the {times in which we live?} require tremendous levels of lemonading. 

The news cycle feels like a tornado right now. 

The Wizard of Oz performs this weekend, and we've been warned we'll see "some wacky choices" on stage. I heard the tornado ensemble will twirl around in garbage bags, covered with trash. Sounds legit.

It's easy to feel confused and bamboozled and immobilized... but there's still poetry and painting and teamwork and imagination, if you need some.

Tickets to Wizard of Oz March 6-8: https://ghschools.hometownticketing.com/embed/all

{may books always be there for us}

Part escape, part instruction, stories make life navigable, survivable.

heart factory

 I'm realizing heartbreak and awe have a very large overlap in the venn diagram.

the F

May the F in February stand for finally, I mean, for family. 

And for fish pie from our favorite neighbor, for forty seven and for air trajectory failures, for a first time adjudicated solo, for forest initiatives and father/son duets, for fine art and field trips and time with friends.

still January

The boys have turned our dining room into a basketball court. A couple weeks ago, after the tree came down, a hoop went up. And I don't know if it's a testament to desperation or DGAFs, if it's a result of the climate, the bitter cold and the brutally cruel politics, but it is what it is.

And I'm just trying to be okay.

I've been texting with a couple favorite cousins, talking about the books our kids are reading and the cologne our kids are wearing. These are the cousins I used to ride to Blockbuster with, ready to duke it out over which video to rent and passing the same soda flavored Lip Smacker around, oblivious to the peace of being backseat passengers, watching our favorite raindrop slide down the window to win the race to the bottom.

Now I'm suddenly never not nervous.

These are hard days to own a human head and heart. Like I'm wondering if it's possible die from losing respect for too many people at once? I don't know how to speak to Celia's goneness or the president's hereness. I do know our family is full of experts in finding joy in the stories we might rather get rid of. But it's exhausting.

And I need it to stop being January.

I've been alternating between noticing things here and far away, going back and forth between the very close up happenings in our house and the very distant atrocities on the internet. I don't even know how to describe the a-lot-of-it all, the underlying sense that life has become impossible for everybody.

What does mercy even mean?