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Long Letter to My Daughter
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Oct 4 18:33 UTC 1994 |
October 4, 1994
Dear Lauren,
My drive to work today took me past Art Start, the preschool
you attended before starting kindergarten. Although it was
only four years ago, I felt a huge wave of nostalgia.
Sometimes when we think back on especially sunny times in our
lives, the passing of the intervening years can seem like a
dreadful mistake, an inexplicable lapse of attention on God's
part. We say, "Where did it go?" as if we'd been tricked out
of it, as if we hadn't lived through it.
I wanted you still to be sitting next to me in the car: a four-
year-old girl in a pink sweater, and denim coveralls with pink
kittens embroidered across the bib, and pink socks covering
your bird-thin ankles, and heartbreaking little white canvas
shoes (already turning grey, the color of time). Sometimes
when we turned into the drive the morning sun would dazzle us.
In unison, we would cry: "Aieee! Bright sun!" I would take
your hand, and we would walk from the parking lot, under the
big trees, across the yard to the back door, which always stuck
and required an extra-hard tug (remember?), whereupon it would
wrench open and shudder and rattle until we closed it again
behind us. Then down a bright windowlit hallway, and through
the kitchen, and finally into one of the play areas, where I
would bend forward and you would strain upward on tiptoe and
kiss me, and then you'd run off to take your place with the
other children, sitting in a circle around one of the teachers
- Miss Kathy or Miss Sue - listening to a story.
Nowadays we go for long walks together. We talk about mud
puddles and jet trails, we identify trees and butterflies.
When I imagine myself taking these walks all by myself in a few
years, as I know I will, naming the wildplants silently to
myself, and greeting with a silent nod the day-lily buds and
wild blackberries you used to stop and snack on - in other
words, when I foreglimpse my future nostalgia for our sunny
present - it can be hard for me to go on our walks together
without a painful lump in my throat. Parents have an
unpleasant way of doing that to themselves. Instead of
enjoying the moment, and having faith that something equally
wonderful will take its place, we torment ourselves with
thoughts about how quickly our children are growing, and how
soon they will leave us.
I went through this with your brother when he was your age, two
years ago. We went for a long leisurely autumn bike ride down
into the park, along the brook and under the willows, and I
felt sad because I sensed that this was the very last ride of
the very last year in which we would spend the summer biking
around together. I was right: the next spring he and his
friends were off on their own adventures - dads not prohibited,
maybe, but not exactly invited, either.
This line of thought is not healthy, I think. I'm not one of
your live-for-the-moment loonies, but nostalgia has its limits.
There have been times with you kids when I actually found
myself getting nostalgic about something that happened only a
couple of months ago! And I don't believe that treasuring
one's memories and setting them down on paper is the answer,
either. Tell you what: "Jurassic Park" came out on video
today. I'm going to go and pick up a copy at K-Mart and we'll
all watch it tonight. Unless anyone has other plans.
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