June 6, 2018-19
Miracle (Year 1)
I love you, Wesley.
It isn't how much you smile, though that is wonderful. It isn't how much you learn, how long you can focus on a single problem, how you beg for books to be read to you all the time, how you always want to join me in my cooking, and say "hot!" It isn't all the little things, or even what they add up to. It is more basic, more binary than that.
It is that you are ours.
It is that you are.
That is the miracle.
I have asked for many more years with you, as any parent does. But there is no peak knowledge, no peak capacity to a human. You are fully you, as fully as I am me. The potential you have is only icing on a fully baked cake. Any thought less is sacrilege: you are no less than me, you are as much as me - if anything, you are more (unsullied by disenchantment, by insecurity, by selfishness, so quick to love and believe and trust, as if that was what the world was for).
//
There is one particular thing I want you to learn: scale. So much knowledge can be summed up in comparisons of scale. One of your favorites books right now poses two questions: “What is smaller than a flea?” and “What is bigger than the sky?” The answer to the first, according to this book for kids, is “A world of things too small to see.” To the second: “The never ever ending sky.” I hope you understand how trite both of those are. There are real answers. In fact, there is one answer to both questions. An overarching, and an underpinning. A first, and a last. A beginning, and an end.
//
You began one year ago. Now we get to count: 1. If you live average, you’ll have 70-ish more of these. There are a thousand decisions that increase or decrease that number. My great-grandmother lived to be 101. She jogged each day until she was 97. My mother attributes my great-grandmother’s health to her positive attitude. As miraculous as this longevity is, the goal of life is not more days or more years. It is good days. You have already had so many good days.
//
You broke your mother, you know. In more ways than one. But the pain let you graft into her in a way too precious for me to covet. Even if I must admire the bond you share with her at a distance, it is worth it. This year has been the story of you, beginning, but it has also been the story of her, changing chapters. I would pick no better son to hurt her than you, and no more constant warmth, no more ambitious mind to challenge her and nestle into her than you.
You are the miracle.
//
Miracle:
A tired word for tired people.
Code for uncanny/incredible/can't.
A name for an event I must admit
makes me believe the supernatural exists.
You were born 1 year and 34 minutes ago.
I caught you.
You were a tired word born to tired people.
You stood for the incredible.
You were an event I must admit
made me believe the supernatural exists.
You traipse through the days,
hunkered into my elbow crook.
You while toward time I do not have
and you find it for me.
You careen frequently,
veer on and off my path
at the most inconvenient intervals.
You furl up to say goodnight once a day
like clockwork conjured
from some preimagined rhythm.
You tinge everything with smile,
mull the click of buckles,
find the kilter in the sleep cycle,
and hoodwink me with wink-attempts
and chuckles.
You are a fresh take on stale speech.
You stand for the simple.
You are an event I still admit
makes me believe God exists.
- Evan
Turning 30, an experience
I got to try my hand at knitting, make kokedama by hand, and eat sushi 31 floors above Bellevue. Not pictured, but I also got to sing karaoke til my hearts content, cuddle my nephews and nieces, and drop Wes off for many hours so that I could miss him so much. Cheers to all the people who made me feel so loved and known at 30 years in <3
Happy Birthday, Shannon
Got gifted a big date where the dessert was smokey and looked like dirt but tasted like chocolate.
The Second Time Around
You gave it your best
shot across the bow.
But you are caught between then
and tomorrow and now.
You swam among sharks
circling you in water and in dreams.
But you are spinning in an arc
so fast you're splitting at the seams.
Before you come undone, out of touch
or before you touch the ground:
Remember this is a new decade of your life.
"You always build it better
the second time around."
Welcome to the big 3-0.
Joyce, 90
“I just can’t believe I made it this long!”
Birthday 2019
Adulthood, round 2.
There are so many things
you could be and do -
so many you have done and been.
I can see you a famous writer,
or a well-known picture-taker,
or another path - but always fighter.
Courageous, honest, smile-maker.
Wherever you take me, I will go.
Wherever you work, I will assist.
You are brilliant and brave, you know.
(And impossible to resist).
Be it Spain or outer space,
a new home, new state, new child,
whether we replace inventions
or reinvent our place,
I will be with you
and it will be worthwhile
while wild.
-E
That time it started snowing during Kyle's Birthday Party!
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.
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)
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.
From Belize
Photo by Taylor Sporleder
The ocean between us has me remembering the first time I was out of the country on your birthday, also the Caribbean. You sent me away with poetry.
But I’m more excited to see what the closing lines of your 20’s will be like. You’ve always been good at ending a poem that seemed to be saying so many things, with a line that conveys it was really only about one very important thing. Maybe 29 isn’t normally the most memorable year for people, but I know you. I know your philosophy on finales. I know that you would say the beginning is only good if the ending is tac-sharp, intended, and arresting. And it’s not because you’ve planned it. You’ll feel your way there. You’ll stumble on it as you’re walking on no discernible path and listening to the twigs and leaves crunch under your feet. And hopefully I’m getting better at being less terrified of that. This decade has proven that the best endings always seem to find their way into your poetry.
So here’s to the long walk that led you up to this year, and to the last stanza of your twenties that will find you in the year to come.
Happy Birthday from Belize, Evan