Do Unto Others

Dear Sydney and Jack,

I don't normally write letters to you both, but this is a special case.

I have spent a lot of time thinking of how to teach the two of you the value of love and friendship and family. I truly believe that family is what you make of it and that people don't have to be blood relations to be a family. I also know that my "family" looks nothing now like I thought it would ten years ago.

People I thought I would be friends with forever are gone from my life completely. People I thought I could count on have let me down and people I never knew cared have lifted me up. People I thought I could never forgive are so dear to me now that I am ashamed that the forgiveness took so long in coming.

I say this because I have realized that the lesson isn't that you do for the people you think are family or that you do for your closest friends, the ones who will be there for you always, but that you do what you can for whom you can when you can.

You do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

So when I heard this past Friday that my friend Mrs. Hazen had suffered a second trimester miscarriage, that she had lost her baby, I cried and cried and felt so very sad and then I gathered myself together and asked, "What would I want someone to do for me?"

So, knowing that she had planned on doing her son, Peter's third birthday party the next day, I called her back and I asked her if she would let me do the party for her. She said she would love that and then she made a list of the things she wanted for her son.

Sydney, you and your dad made the green cupcakes (since Peter loves the color green).

Your dad made the cookie cake, which was a special request of Mrs. Hazen's and he also went to the store and picked up some fresh fruit because Mrs. Hazen has this wacky idea that every kids' birthday party should include fresh fruit and when you are trying to help someone, one of the kindest things you can do is indulge their wacky notions.

I picked up balloons and streamers (green, of course) and other party goods and three pints of chocolate ice cream and went over to Mrs. Hazen's house to eat ice cream and decorate the house for the party. I also told her that if she should have to go to the hospital before her mom arrived in town, I would help with her kids.

As it turned out, that is what was needed and I took you two and the two Hazen kids to the air show with your dad and the Hazen's Cousin Clint.

All four of you played at our house during the day and (blessedly) all four of you took a nice nap. It was hard, so very hard, to be having this happy playful day with you kids knowing that my friend was in so much pain, physically and emotionally, but I look at this picture, of the Hazen kids, oblivious to the distress their mother was in and I am so glad to have done that for them and grateful for your help in distracting them.

We went over to the Hazen's house around four and had the party. Mrs. Hazen made it home from the hospital just as the party was starting, but needed some time alone, so we held the party without her. I think that was the hardest part for me... wanting to be upstairs comforting my friend and knowing that the best thing I could do for her was being outside, in the yard, taking pictures of her son's party, helping the party to move along and keeping him from ever knowing that his happy day was marred in any way.

Why am I telling you this? Because we have choices in life. We can chose to think only of ourselves and let the rest of the world worry about itself. But I don't think that's the way God meant us to live. We can also chose to rescue every stray and wear ourselves out trying to save a world that cannot be saved by any man (or woman).

I am trying to model for you that middle road. The one where you help those who need it, but set limits for yourself. There was a part of me that wanted to go out and rent a petting zoo to make this the best party ever for Peter, but I held back and bought him what his mother would have, if she had been herself. I asked you dad for help for my friend in making the cake and doing the shopping, and later in various ways on the day of the party, but I have left him to go out with his friend and play his XBox today, so he can recharge. While I was helping with Peter's party, another friend called me to ask for my help in securing a sub for her because her father had passed away. I told her I would take care of it, but what I really did was call a mutual third friend and delegated. I had already committed to the Hazens and could only handle so many emergencies in one weekend.

I was proud to be able to set that example for you this weekend. I was also a little embarrassed because so many of Mrs. Hazen's family members were so free with their praises and wanted to thank me and you could see a little wonder in their faces that your dad and I had taken care of so much.

Why would we do so much for the Hazens? Because if this were either of the two of you, and this was your birthday and I had to be in the hospital, I would want you to be able to have the day you wanted even if I couldn't.

I only did what I would have someone else do for me, and that's all I will ever ask of either of you.

Love,
Mom

I don't think this is an "air" plane...

Dear Jack,

I was so excited about the Air Show this weekend. You have been so captivated by airplanes lately and I finally found an event that was more about you than your sister.

So which of us was more disappointed by the reality of the event? I really cannot say. You just couldn't comprehend that these big things on the tarmac were the same little things you see up in the sky. So really, the air show was a bust.

The worst part was that you tried to tell us what it was you wanted. You are picking up signs a lot right now and this is your sign for "airplane."

Notice that you are not looking at that big piece of metal next to you as you say "airplane"; you are looking up at the sky where airplanes are supposed to be.

Oh, well. I tried.

Love,
Mom

Little Hands

Dear Jack,

You recently brought me a new old book. It had been hiding in plain sight on the bookcase in your closet. Your sister had never noticed it, but it was a very tall book, the very kind that you like so much and so you were drawn to it.
I bought this book when I was in college, as part of my "take back my childhood" campaign, in which I bought an assortment of frivolous things that were too expensive for what they were for your grandparents to have been able to reasonably afford them but that had captured my imagination.

It's one of those carousel pop-up books that opens into a full 360 degrees to make a dollhouse. I remember seeing them in B. Dalton's bookstore in the mall but my mother (wisely) declined to buy the $20 "book" for me as a child since I probably would have destroyed it, if I had played with it at all. Instead, I bought it as a college student, left it open on a table for several months, admired it, and then closed it up and let it gather dust.

Until you found it.

You loved it. I sat on the couch with it open on the coffee table as you and your sister played with it for over half and hour. I don't have to tell you that anything over about ten minutes is forever in toddlerland.

I was so impressed with the gentleness with which you played in this little paper house. Your sister took possession of the father, the mother, and the sister, leaving you the brother. With your little baby hands and trademark precision, you found a dog, a cat, another sister and a baby hiding in various nooks and grannies in the house. The sister we gave to Sydney, but the baby you kept for yourself. In fact, in finding the baby, you lost all interest in the "brother" and just moved that baby all around the house.

You hid the baby under the table (which is where he had been hiding in the first place), let him fall down the stairs, hid him in the closet and the chimney, and gave him many baths.

Seeing your chubby little baby hands being so very gentle with a dollhouse you could easily tear to bits was somewhat surreal. I kept waiting for that ripping sound and it never came.

I wonder if this is a sign of your personality, or simply a quietness of babyhood that hasn't left you, yet. Either way, I love it. I love that you can play so gently, so quietly, and so happily.

I love that you love the things that appeal to me.

I love you.

Love,
Mom

Falling in the Backyard

Dear Jack,

It's that time of year again. Summer break is over and the weather, although still very warm, is no longer in the triple digits. September is more than half over and the school year is well established.

We haven't really set foot in the backyard for the last three scorching months. We've gotten the kiddie pool out a time or two, I guess, but we've stayed completely on the deck, under the shade of the umbrella with some body part actually in the coolness of the water at all times. No one has played in the backyard at all. Then I got my hammock and tried to lay in it while you and your sister played and had to feel so sorry for you, trying to find your toys in the (for you at least) knee high weeds and all of your toys were covered with a layer of dirt, leaves, pollen, and who knows what else.

That's right, it's time to fall in the backyard.

First of all, your dad mowed the grass (an act which flushed out the fox and let us know that in our absence, and probably after the long rains, a new hole was dug into the den under the deck).

Then I gathered all of your toys, washed them, threw out the broken ones, and rearranged the toys from the Sydney-centric way that the backyard had been last spring when you weren't even walking to a Jack-friendly way for the coming fall.

You loved, loved, loved all of the slides and were able to manage the castle slide completely on your own.

Your new favorite, though, is the tool bench, which was sadly one of the few toys that I didn't manage to clean, so now I have a task for tomorrow.

Mostly, you just enjoyed being outside. You have always been calmer outside than in and I'm glad for your sake that fall is all but here and we can spend more and more time enjoying the great plasticine outdoors together.

Happy Fall!

Love,
Mom

Order and Art

Dear Jack,

I admit that I did not read to you nearly as much in your first year as I did your sister. We were just on the go too often and didn't have the same evening quiet time. You were read to some and there were books aplenty for you to play with, but sitting and reading book after book after book never happened.

It's been interesting, therefore, to see your interest in books (pronounced with a firm "buh" when you want to be read to) growing in the past few weeks.

I will go and sit down on your bed to watch you play in the evenings and you will announce "buh" and go into your closet to get a book for us to share.

Your favorite right now is The Louvre Up Close. It's a collection of reproductions of famous works of art currently housed at the Louvre. I think you like it because you really don't like to be read to and prefer to sit and examine pictures over and over and over again. You point to things in the pictures and like for me to tell you what they are. You grunt and talk in your private Jack language a lot, so I know you have things to say about the pictures. Mostly, I feel like you are reading to me.

One of my favorite parts, though, is after we're done reading. Without any prompting, you take the book...

walk to your closet...

and put it back on the shelf where you found it.

Just like that.

Your personality is developing so much right now. Seeing your sharp little eye find so much detail in a painting. Listening to your little voice telling me what the story is about. Watching your little arms struggling to hold that big book because you are determined to have everything in your room just so.

I love you more today than I did yesterday and I didn't know it was possible.

Love,
Mom

Nine Eleven

Dear Jack,

I was getting ready for work, a job at a bookstore called Borders when my boyfriend (who would one day become your dad) called me and said,

"A plane has hit the World Trade Center towers."

"What does that mean?" I asked. Was it a plane that lost course, an accident? Was it an act of war? What did it mean that a plane ran into a building in New York?

"I don't know," said your dad.

With those three words I knew that history was happening. Your dad always knows what's going on in the world. He always knows what an event means and what the global ramifications may be. Your dad is my own personal google and the idea that something could happen in this world that he would not immediately understand was terrifying to me.

Somewhere across the state, as I would find out years later, your uncle was hearing this same news and understanding that a terrorist group had the utter audacity to organize an attack on American soil. It was then, he told his friends, that he decided he would join the Army. Living through a moment in history when America felt, possibly for the first time in a generation or more, actually vulnerable, was life changing for him. Life ending as it would ultimately turn out.

Those terrorists who came to America to make their statement were from a previously little known country called Afghanistan. A little more than eight years later, your uncle, a American hero, would die on Afghan soil.

The full circleness of it all just numbs me right now. The idea that a phone call on my way to work would lead from one event to another to the loss of so many, including someone so very dear to us, makes my head spin.

I hope as you grow up, you and your peer group are taught about this day, Nine Eleven, and taught about the terror of the impossible, the heroics at ground zero and in the Pentagon and in the air above that Pennsylvanian field, the lives lost, the promises made. The promise that we as a nation. would. never. forget.

It's not a pretty day. It's not a happy day. It's not a day I ever want to relive. But it's a day that we absolutely cannot forget.

Love,
Mom

School Closure?

Dear Jack,

I got an odd call at 6:15 this morning. The call said that school was closed because of the rain. Now, I knew it had rained all night, of course, and I don't want to belittle the flood damage, because I am sure there were many with leaks in their roofs and water in their living rooms today, but we were thankfully not among them. So I was blissfully unaware of any problem with the rain waters and had no idea that school could be canceled because of the rain.

This closure left me with two thoughts: 1) what bad weather make-up day am I going to be sad to lose later in the year and 2) what in the world are we going to do today?

I put the thoughts together and realized that we had better do something fabulous because later on I'm going to remember this day as I'm working on Good Friday and I'll be irritated if it was wasted.

So I put you and your sister in the car, we stopped for Starbucks, and we went off to the Children's Museum in the rain.

The museum was on the edge of empty since the surrounding districts just did a late start or had no change in schedule. This meant that none of those pesky big kids were playing with the over-sized chess set. You were very upset to find the chess set in disarray and spent a lot of time fixing it. I love how much you love order.

It was a really fun day, but I'm afraid come Good Friday, I'm going to wish I had just gone to school in the rain.

Oh, well, at least we didn't just sit around the house, right? And those chess sets don't fix themselves.

Love,
Mom