Your every edge, from the bottom to the top of the tiptops of you, luminates golden to me.
My dad turns 60.
In the strange process of selecting a person
to symbolize the past, present or future,
there are two things to consider:
who has more?
And who is in each?
Wesley is in your past and mine,
but has more future than us both.
Your age is in his future and mine,
but you have more history than us both.
Are you Future or Past?
There is a symmetry to the question:
you are the base or the peak of the pyramid,
depending on the flip.
You are First of us three,
or you are Last.
You are the Still
before my Steady,
his Spry.
Among our Crawl, Walk, Run,
you are the Fast.
There is symmetry to the equation:
zero to thirty to sixty.
Three equidistant generations
of men, perhaps some meaning
in the math.
But whatever the Future,
whatever the Past,
I’m grateful in the Present
that you’re here,
in wisdom, conversation,
feeling and thought.
I’m gonna get you…
Guess Who
One of my favorite people was born today
Two things that Anna encouraged in me as a kid and adult:
1. A love of photos.
From the time I met her as a kid, she had boxes of them. I would watch her do little photo shoots of sisters and other projects and she would always share the bounty after she got them developed. She had a natural and charming love for the sentimental which I can see had a huge impact on me.
2. A love of giggling.
She can’t get enough of silly things and she’s always been that way. She made me laugh and she made me funny. And if every 10 year old girl was granted an older female influence that made her feel that way… It would just be so much better.
These two loves are so dear to me, which gets at some part of why she is so dear to me.
Happy Birthday, Anna
(✎S 📷S)
Six Years
This little girl turned six today. It was once the keen desire to have pictures of her little face that moved me to learn more about how to take a good photo. So, it’s quite magical whenever I take a photo that I love that she is in. I look at it and treasure the way a person can inspire so much without saying a word. You inspire me, Abigail, just by being you. You always will.
(✎S 📷S)
So often now when we are holding him, he holds our hand at the same time. If he sees it in front of his face, he grabs for it and pulls it to his own face or chest. I love that he now can do one small thing beyond crying, that one gesture, to express a desire.
(✎S 📷S)
9-20-18
“The key
is swallowed by the ordinary.”
I have always disregarded the day-to-day
as if it held no over-arch.
I have always discarded the mundane
like it had no narrative significance.
And I have always known
I was wrong.
He fell asleep on my chest for the dozenth time.
You walked behind me - you always peruse a little more slowly than I do.
It was the beginning of Fall,
the air was freshly chilled.
Yesterday was nothing special,
a rose garden,
September sun.
Except that if every day from now
were like this one,
it would have all been worth it.
(✎E 📷S)
A Poem for the Morning
I had a whole year
they told me
to decide whether I wanted
to spend every following year
with you.
Go through every season,
till you excise any reason
for breaking us off,
they said.
I had no similar option
with our son:
9 months of wonder,
then lightning, then thunder -
we all fell down.
Whereas you created the mold for yourself
in my heart;
he is supposed to conform to the mold
awaiting him
in my heart.
He must navigate the street around the corner,
the one where we saw him coming.
I didn’t see you coming.
These are two very different
but equal ways of loving.
(✎E 📷S)
Cheers, Ev
September is the month where we get to add another year to marriage and another year since we met. I get to pause, and think about so many days with you that have been filled to the brim with quiet contemplation and conversation, a shared passion.
And the best thought we've had, the best of you and me, now lives and breathes outside of us and watches the world. He often has that look of question as he watches us. He is spitting our image back to us in an uncomfortable and breath-taking way all the time.
It’s been thrilling to see you in someone else every day.
We like to think we’re good at putting our finger on what we know is going to slip through them. But there's a touch of infinity to his joy that's intangible. There's a level of mystery to this thought experiment that's almost painful, but stops just short at awesome. The old fashioned, full-of-awe kind.
Before we were parents we were spouses and before that love interests. And when we don’t know how to be anything, we’re always friends and fellow truth-seekers. I've often thought, there's no one I'd rather suffer with than you. Is that strange? There's also no one I'd rather be deliriously happy with. And that’s the best way I can sum up what marriage has been like.
Cheers, Ev.
Photo by Taylor Sporleder
Six week appointment
Wesley,
Today was my final Dr appointment for awhile. I guess we made it to some kind of milestone.
I am often thinking about what I will tell you about this summer...your start at this outside-the-womb human thing.
I want to tell you that I subsisted on a sea-saw diet of despair and friendship. That you pushed and pushed and pushed me until I could only find gratitude to hold on to. That, for a time, you cured me of vanity for I no longer worried about the shape of my figure, the veracity of my thoughts, or the successfulness of my work.
That your story began with people. It began as a story set among the pillars of an ancient amphitheater, and I sat down to hear the poem. These people loved you through ice cream drop offs and caffeinating your parents and covering work and homemade provisions and long texts and cross state drives and cross country flights and rocking back and forth and listening ears for our struggles and deaf ears for when we couldn't calm you, and so much overwhelming graciousness. I'll tell you about each pillar by name, because they all waited very patiently to hear yours.
I will tell you the whole truth, including all things female. Especially the female parts perhaps, for that's where the lion share of demand was aimed. Though you were born different than me, your story started with parity. We were equally helpless.
I'll tell you all the flowers were blooming and we saw some and missed others because the heat that we and they endured made it impossible to keep up at times.
I'll tell you your father grew older in age and younger at heart, as is his way. And that he kept you alive, because he kept me alive.
I'll tell you I wore my moods like wounds and waited for healing. I'll tell you your smile was both enough and never enough to heal me, and I imagined mine was the same to you.
That's where your story started, love. With spring flowers and supportive people-pillars and a dad who lives life like he's always making art. And my persevering smile, and yours.
Also with a Storyteller.
A Newly 30-Year-Old to His Newly 30-Day-Old
You are nothing if not pendulum:
you scream-coarse my nerves raw,
then teach me the delicious strain
of an over-filled heart.
If I am fire, you cool.
If I am freeze, you thaw.
You do this while doing almost nothing.
All you tend to achieve
is sleep and breathe.
Existence
is ample cause to love.
Even if you did not smile, squirm or coo,
or never calmed, nor stared askew,
I would still have no choice
but to love you.
Some little understood - under-studied - tug,
an elemental force like weak or strong nuclear,
but less clinical, more crucial.
Textbook,
but novel;
biographical fantasy:
you are a story unto yourself,
a book I will never put down
(don’t even let me pause).
You share space but own your own:
full sentence, also clause.
Yours is the only friendship I anticipated
but the only stranger I have ever truly loved.
Do not let me become
too familiar.
But keep making me family,
keep making me -
through the early-human ways,
the crumbling into my shoulder,
the piercing gray-blue gaze
as clear as perfect water -
keep making me
your father.
Lavonne Marie
Lavonne Marie, at 1 year old (1939)
The bar has been set in my mind for parenting. My Grandma will be 80 years old this October. Her dad passed away when he was only 40, more than 60 years ago. Her mom passed away when she was 60, over 30 years ago.
I asked my Grandma this week to tell me about her parents because I know it's a topic she enjoys. She paused, and started to cry a little before she said, "You know, I just feel like the luckiest person... I had the very best parents in the whole world." And then we were both quiet for a moment.
When Evan and I talked later we agreed that : If, after nearly half his lifetime spent without us, Wesley says anything nearly so gracious, with such emotion, at the end of his life... What more could you want for your parent-child relationship? For us the answer was nothing.
First bath & Father's Day
Here’s to the best baby-daddy of them all. I can’t wait for the many years to come of watching you be a father. As many have said, it’s a surprise to no one that you are such a perfect fit for this. Father-son relationships make the best love stories. <3 Happy Fathers Day, Ev
Postpartum
“But what they never really tell you
When they tell you that it’s hard
Is it’s so hard.” -The Welcome Wagon, It’s So Hard
Photo by Taylor Sporleder
One Week Old
It's been one week since you held me for the first time. About 24 hours before you came, the hardest week of my life started. With little warning I was reduced to a human with only infinite need and nothing to give. My days pushed forward and dragged me with them, limbs uncoordinated and flailing, shedding weight and adding raw new experience every time my eyes opened. I could see no more than three feet in front of me. Those three feet held your gaze and said to my shaking spirit over and over, "shh, child," until at last I quieted. Now - and only now - we begin to slowly reverse the trend. Things that were broken apart are coming back together in a new way. Things like you and me. And I'm starting to hear you as you tell me, in so many ways, "Be patient with yourself, be patient with me."
So here's to one week since you first held me, Wesley. I'll never be able to pay you back, but you know I'll always be trying.
Wesley Charles
Son,
I have learned in these last 40 weeks, that I am no Adam.
I cannot name someone I do not know. And when will I actually know you?
I have decided to come at this differently. I cannot choose your name, so I will give you someone else’s. I cannot make an identity for you – you will be who you will be. Instead, I will give you something else valuable: the names of your great grandfathers, and with that, my memory of them.
You have likely been born too late to get to know these men yourself.
But you will have their names; you will always have something of them with you. If we’re both as lucky as I hope, you’ll be comforted by the memory of them when you wrestle with who you are.
Wesley.
I have not had the privilege of getting to know James Wesley Dunn for very long, but with some people that is unnecessary. I know enough.
Sometime after I first met your father, your Grandma Dunn told me that her children are who they are (she is convinced) because James Wesley and his wife have prayed every day for her children since their births. Before I met your Great Grandpa Dunn, I learned he was a faithful praying man.
Later I learned that he wasn’t always that way, that he came to that place later in life but never looked back. Perhaps you could say he was a better Grandfather than (young) Father in some ways. But he did not seem to think that it was ever “too late” to be changed.
You will probably hear a lot of other cools things about him, he’s had forests named after him and smuggled bibles under iron curtains, etc.
But please don’t be confused, you are named after him for his prayer life.
It is a simple thing, but not an easy thing. You will not be born knowing how to pray, and you will often not do it even if you do know how. I am still learning. But even if it takes you your whole life, this is what I would want you to know whenever you sign your name: there is nothing more important than learning to talk with God.
He’s also an involved and invested Grandpa, even to me who is a granddaughter “in-law.” He has remembered and asked about and prayed for some of the most difficult things in my life over the last ten years. He’s remembered to pray for things in my life that I forgot to pray for. He stubbornly prays for things I’ve given up praying for.
He is currently struggling to be himself anymore, after suffering multiple strokes. He at times is incoherent or nonsensical, which feels heartbreaking. But I like to think that no matter what he says to those around him, he’s still having the same decades-long Conversation with the person he’s invested in the most. I know that when he does leave the world, he will have endless conversation with Him; it will be some of the sweetest and deepest, because it will be a simple extension of the dialogue he’s been having all these years.
So my dear Wesley, learn to pray, like your Great Grandfather, James Wesley Dunn.
Wesley Charles.
Pinning down the exact reason I wanted to name you after your Great Grandpa Charles Nelson Berry is both easy and impossible.
While middle names are often relegated to “doesn’t really matter” status, you should know that this was the name I knew first, almost immediately.
There is a myth in our culture that men are simple and women are complicated. Your Great Grandpa Berry apparently never heard about it. He is one of the most complex characters I’ve ever met.
His is a story of imperfection and wandering. It’s a story of many regrets and of great intelligence that suffered long to become wisdom. Because of this I grew up hearing about many of his flaws, from both himself and my grandmother. But I never knew this flawed version, only a perfect grandfather. That’s because his story is one of redemption, the painful enduring kind.
While this is all important to understand why he means so much to me, it’s not why I want to give you his name.
What I hope you will know firsthand from him, but carry somehow with you even if you do not get that privilege, is that he asks questions. He has asked me some of the best questions of my life, and still does. He has never allowed my curiosity to sloth. He is (at this time of writing) 79 years old, and still the most curious person I know. He has let neither failure nor success stop him from asking more.
He embraces what he does not know, finds and traces the shape of it, and offers it to others and to God without shame.
Most prefer question-answering to question-asking, but I hope that you, Wesley Charles, will know (as simply as you know your middle name), sometimes what is most overlooked is most important, what is most basic is most powerful.
He is not paralyzed by the questions that seem to have no answer. He does not allow them to stop him from being faithful. But he never stops asking. He has taught me that this is where your relationships with other people find depth. This is where your relationship with God finds genuine peace: to come back to the place of surrender – there is much you do not know.
I’ve never known your Great Grandpa Berry to be embarrassed that he did not know something. His conversations are full of an excitement that there is still so much to be taught and so much to be thought about. When he eventually passes away, I know I will most grieve the loss of his thoughtful questions. And I take comfort knowing he will have endless time with the ultimate Answerer.
Wesley Charles, learn the art of questioning, like your Great Grandfather, Charles Nelson Berry.
You are the child of two language-lovers, so in all the sufferings and triumphs of life, our hope for you is great conversation: that you talk freely with God and share your questions with Him openly. That you know others by their deepest prayers and have the humility to ask them.
That whoever you turn out to be, you will always have Wesley Charles in you.
Love,
Mom
---------
What a paradox you are, little son:
worthy of everything
but you've yet done nothing.
If I do this right, I will teach you
to chase and still,
rush and pause.
You will climb mountains inside
an imaginatively architected mindscape,
and you will come near quiet waters -
a noisy city's escape.
What a paradox you are, little son:
big in weight,
tiny in ounces.
It is impossible to understate
your importance,
but the only thing that counts is
one connection, soul
to soul.
This is my only goal, fragile one:
pursue the wild,
maintain the wait.
Bellow and hush.
Love and hate -
only mind your aim.
This light is the spectrum I had to contemplate
while choosing your name:
the paramount of paradoxes, son...
You came here pre-condemned;
may you beg to be redeemed.
May you be both hemmed
and freed.
Solemned
and
dreamed.
All other voices will demand you attend
their overt energy,
claiming significance with empty noise.
May you instead
find passion inside of poise.
We named you this way
so you would not forget,
one name for a Man of Pursuit
one for a Man of Prayer.
You will embody them, child.
My love to you is bait.
May you chase, with every moment
you have to spare,
the wild
within
the wait.
Love,
Dad
The Arrowhead Points North
When I was young
I had an obsidian arrowhead.
It was chipped away along
the edge
into an oblong
diamond, slightly curved.
I can still remember the irregular sharpness,
the way it cut dents into my skin.
Some memories leave deeper marks on us
than others.
You
will immediately be a siren,
a signal for all my world to stop.
Like the way I rose up from deciphering
the cougar paw print in the mud
in my childhood neighborhood
to stare face to face with a six point buck.
I can still feel the sun caked
brown of that forest.
You will reminisce of barnacles while barefoot,
the sap-laden scrape of pine bark branches
twenty feet up.
You will be all the beauty
and all the mess
of adventure.
I will walk you to rivers
just so we can face the challenge of crossing them.
The way the moss slips feet into tight crevices,
step light and solid all the same.
You with your fragile flimsy newbornness,
me with my steady footing:
We will carve our names
into the trees along these trails.
I will quickly become familiar
with the radiant heat
of your rapid heartbeat,
the shape of your nose,
the soles of your feet.
I will be the connoisseur
of your contraption,
every contrived trace terrain
in face, in hand, in brain.
But, son, you must know that
as you grow
I will love you less in touch or force
with love no less tangible:
trade my deep knowledge
of the texture of your skin
to grasp the contour
of your soul.
Advice
I am a long time away from being able to say "the most useful pregnancy advice given to me was..." But I can share my favorite advice. It came from my father in law, who told me the best prep I could be doing right now was to focus on my marriage (being close and united), instead of reading a bunch of parenting books. He said our marriage would have a huge impact on our child. ...While I think this is probably wise in ways I don't even know yet, I mainly took that as a perfect excuse to spend time with my favorite person. And on the eve of week 38 of trying to implement this advice, I'm just here to say that I regret nothing.
Photo by Taylor Sporleder
Full Term: Father
This is your father.
He is a man of the birds,
without wings, feathers, or sense of north,
he lives in the clouds.
You are his tune to carry.
Your flight together will be long and directionless.
He will forget you are there sometimes.
He will drop you for a moment.
He will know when you no longer need carried,
you won’t have to tell him.
You will see in him a true masculinity that is both beautiful and fierce,
intense and kind,
boldly selfless.
Your presence will remind him to remember what he wants to never forget.
He finds rhythm without words, and he will show you how.
He knows each word’s rhythm, and he will teach it to you.
He is a man of the birds,
With instinct, feeling, and prayer,
he will show you why he lives in the clouds.
This your father.
Photo by Taylor Sporleder