28 June 2014
To my son,
We are only weeks away from meeting you, and the gravity of this fact is beginning to settle in me. I feel it in my heart and I think of you constantly. I obsessively collect things – lessons, beliefs, books, beauty, songs – that I want to share with you as if I’ll have only minutes or hours to show you how to live, how to make decisions, and how to be a good and happy and healthy person when you get here. And then I realize that I’ll have more than minutes or hours to show you these things, but begin to worry that I’m not good enough, selfless enough, or strong enough to teach you what you need to know, even with years together.
A friend of mine earned his PhD recently, and he’s one of the warmest, sweetest, and hardest working men I know. I felt honored to be invited to his family’s party for him tonight. I was surprised to learn that they’d rented a big room out with music, a slide show of his life, a catered dinner, and two custom cakes (one looked like his PhD diploma and the other like two stacked books with his dissertation title on top). They’d really gone all out to celebrate his accomplishment. Some family were local but others flew and drove across the country to celebrate him, and many people from all different generations got up to tell stories about their lives together and how proud they were of his accomplishment.
Being pregnant with you and listening to his mom talk about expecting him and about the things she wanted for his life, I thought of you. I’m changing with you, every day. A lot of people talked about God – there are a couple of preachers in his family – and although I don’t believe in God (in so many words), what they said struck home. It’s enough to make me want to introduce you to a good church, even if I’d prefer you didn’t fully take to just one. There’s something about a community sharing a common belief and repeating the same kindnesses to each other that teaches you more than I can at home. I don’t know how to give you that goodness without the not-so-goodness it often comes with. It’s the good in religion that I rarely see or acknowledge anymore. There are good things about bad things and bad things about good things. Most things are not just one or the other. We live in the gray, and much of life is spent deciding how much contrast to use in our judgments, like a picture we are trying to bring into focus.
I want to teach you that friendship is earned and people should earn your loyalty and love. They deserve your empathy and compassion because they are living beings, but there are other things that must be earned. I want to teach you that “to whom much is given, much is expected,” because you will be given much. I want to teach you that each day is a gift and if you can wake up and talk to God, Goddess, the grass or the Universe and express gratitude for all you have been blessed with and ask what it is you can do that day to be better, to give more, to make the world a better place, then you will have a full life. Realize that the best person you can be is your best self. Ask what you can do to live up to your potential, and give everything you have when you commit. Your word matters – if you say you will do something for someone, that means everything, no matter how small the act.
I hope our love is enough. I hope our example means something. I hope you learn from our mistakes. I hope you will love and live openly and honestly. I hope you will have integrity and generosity. I hope you will stand up for others and I hope you will be kind and fearless in your pursuits. I hope you are the kind of person who will tell the server when you haven’t been charged for something you ordered, who will return a full wallet to someone who’s lost it, who will stop traffic to help someone – or something – get across the road safely and without fear. I hope you will kindly correct friends and strangers who say sexist or racist things, and set an example for others. I love you and I hope the world is good enough for you. It won’t be, but I hope you will never stop trying to make it that way.
I already love you more than you’ll ever know.
Renaissancing Me 