love letter

August 20, 2008 | Filed Under familial, letters | 5 Comments 

lola, it is probably good that you tell me with your voice and your
expression that you have had enough of my fiddling with you here (let’s
wear this dress! no, this one!) and there (what kinds of shoes should
you wear when you walk?) and a little bit here (sit, let me clip this
wisp of hair with this poodle barrette!) and a little more here (quick!
with the flowers! the camera!).  sometimes when i’m taking care of you
i remember being a mother to my dolls, the one who peed her pants after
drinking from her bottle (and after giving a good shaking, oh my, what
a terrible design…), the prairie baby with the soft face and
embroidered eyelashes (i’d love another of these prairie babies, mom,
really.  please make us one.  please!).  you are like a doll, lola,
your fat legs and cheeks, your little lips and nose.  so it is good
that you tell me enough is enough or i may get a little carried away.

oh, peaches (the edible kind, not the nickname-y baby kind — this is
for you, annie, carey), how i love you! i enjoy squeezing you and
peeling off your skin and pureeing you in the blender.  the lingering
sweetness that you leave in the air stays in the kitchen long after
you’ve been eaten and wiped away, and i like that.

somehow noise and chaos are not what i make and do these days, i
don’t know when or where i lost this ability and, instead, became
annoyed and exhausted by it.  probably at bob jones.  boys, henry,
jude, i was a girl once, a long time ago, and i’m sure we would have
made quite a ruckus together, outside in the firefly light and dark
grass of that yard i lived in when i was six, seven.  of course, we are
here together and i should be able to make a ruckus with you now.
sometimes we do.  i apologize for my impatience with your volume, for
the way i often want to stop all of your crazy movements just because
when i see them out of the corners of my eyes it annoys me.  why is it
annoying?  i don’t want to be annoyed by your childishness.

summer, you’ve been good to us, lazy and good.  a little too hot and
there wasn’t much rain in you so everything we planted died or didn’t
bother to come up from the cool dark earth into the shadow of the
shriveling orange dress that you insisted on wearing.  you came to us
first at the beach and this may be the best way to say goodbye to
spring.  hopefully it will be the way we say goodbye to you, sand and
the the glitter of sun in shards and salt on the water.  i think that
this sort of goodbye is the kind that you like the best, isn’t it?  a
freckled wave of your hand in the sea, the wind on your back cool and
october.