Dear Little One,

Mama is grunting a lot these days. Rolling over is rough and I am a little wobbly when I walk… maybe God wants me to get a sense of the struggles you will have when you finally meet the sunshine. Do you struggle inside there? Or are all your movements dances?

A kind lady named Mary J. performed freestyle poetry in Bryant Park for us over lunch on Thursday. You must have been awake because I was sitting in partial sun and her voice had a rhythm like reading a book. Anyway, it was wonderful and we tipped her – you and me – under those green, London plane trees.

You seem to be confusing the crowds, my sweet. A very nice Brazilian woman at the Bryant Park B stop told me you were most certainly a boy, but the day before a Peruvian lady in Jamba Juice said she knew you must be a girl (she also said I looked cute, which I appreciated). The copier repair guy thinks you are a boy because I’m pointy and your Papa thinks you are a girl because I am round. Oh, who are you, dear little one, and how will you laugh when I tell you everyone’s predictions?

I’m sorry for the confusion, by the way, about the names. I went ahead calling him Daddy before he was convinced that sounded just right. What do you think – do “Mama” and “Papa” suit us? You are really the one who will decide. Maybe you will call us “Nuni” and “Didu” – it would be so hipster if you made up your own mind. We’ll talk about skinny jeans some other day.

For now – this little story about your Papa. It happened 10 months ago, but I thought you should know more about the man with the funny voices who plays all the best records (and occasionally sings Justin Bieber’s, “Baby” right over my belly).

I had just finished work on the last Friday of August and I took my new route (the 5 at Grand Central, to the Q at Union Square) to the Prospect Park stop and then walked the short 377 feet to our new apartment building. I hadn’t seen it yet, because he’d found the apartment while I was at work two weeks before. This late August night was my first official “homecoming.”

I punched buttons for A64 outside the building and he buzzed me inside. When I got to the sixth floor, your Papa was waiting (dripping with a full day of summer, city moving sweat) and beaming with new apartment excitement. He scooped me up and carried me across our first threshold.  I was blushing and feeling silly , but I loved it.

We haven’t had a family meeting or voted, but that little threshold performance established a family rule: We will never skimp on celebrations.

You’ve already been a part of several of the big ones – Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and some great birthdays. Do you remember the way the candles were lit in November and the way the champagne spilled out at Easter? But, sometimes special days don’t get a square on the calendar or vacation days.

This world will always try tell you how to live in it best, my little one.  But it never said anything to me about the day your Papa carried me across the threshold of our home or the Monday nights hosting neighbors and strangers in our apartment for pancakes or the night picnics on the fire escape. The world didn’t teach me how to celebrate well in grief or sing for joy in pain.

It’s confusing, this world.

But I’m not going to apologize for the struggle, though I want to. I want to say sorry for the broken down cities and all the deep, furrowed eyebrows. I want to say sorry for the days of imperfect weather and for the impatient commuters. I want to say sorry for the smog in the air and the greedy politicians. I want to say sorry this isn’t Eden, little one.

I am not going to apologize, no.

Because God – remember, your Creator who knows you so well? God is not apologizing. He is not sorry for making you. He is not sorry you are getting ready to say hello to a smoggy, grouchy, rough-and-tumble world. One beautiful thing about God is that he will never give up renewing things. He celebrates every day with a sunrise, every season with new colors. He celebrates with the stars in the skies and with the cherry blossoms lining the promenade in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. He celebrates in the fertile ground of farms in Iowa and in the hearts of people gathered in His name.

He doesn’t hold back when it comes to celebrations, not even a little bit. He withholds no good thing. There is a verse in the book of Psalms, in the Bible, that says,

For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
    the Lord bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold
    from those who walk uprightly. (Psalm 84:11)

We want our home to be like God’s home for us: withholding no good thing. We’ll need your help, though, because the world does not get less confusing as you live more days in it.

Help us remember this – can you? Remind us that we want to receive all the celebrations God stirs up and we want to offer celebrations with the same spirit.

Oh, does any of this make sense darling?

love,

mama

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Read all the dear little one posts here.