As many of my longtime readers know, a few years ago, I started an email account to hand over to Bridget when she turns 18. I send the account letters & pictures throughout the year–and one is always a letter on her birthday. Her birthday was yesterday-so I’m little late in finishing this…but I swear my aim is fucking true.
To my sweet, sweet girl:
This year, we have been getting into houseplants…entering an era of tending things loving, bringing things blazing to life. The amaryllis, a cast off of my mother’s, was only a bulb when she gave it to us. It was an ugly lunk of a plant…resembling an elephant knee planted in dirt. You and I both watered it, moved it around the apartment to find the light it liked best, whispered encouragements to it. And, finally, on your 12th birthday, it burst open with a glorious, flaming-red flare…A trumpet of color…Vibrant petals, the color of a beach sunrise as it is tugged out of the water up into the heavens, dripping a red juice of sunlight…
It seemed too perfectly timed, too pregnant with weight to mean nothing…so I had to look it up. And, ah, the amaryllis flower symbolizes strength, determination and resilience. The height and sturdiness made it a symbol of strength and determination in Victorian times. Its ability to flower in the winter months represents resilience. Of course, it burst into color on the birthday that came after the hardest year of your life, my darling, hardy bloom.
You know, when your father & I picked your name out, there were stipulations. Your father wanted something Irish. I just wanted something beautiful that had meaning. Your father picked Bridget and I picked Claire. Bridget meaning strength, power. Claire meaning bright & clear. And that is you—strong and bright…I only wish you hadn’t had to prove you were both of these things as much as you did in the past year.
This year we had to move unexpectedly, quickly. It hurt like a broken bone, leaving behind the only house you’ve ever known. By the time you read this letter, you may have figured out that it hurt me, too. I tried not to let you see it, how it crushed me when we had to say goodbye to the room I painted while 8 months pregnant….dreaming all the dreams I had for you, while holding my belly—feeling you kick and somersault inside…feeling your wave of movements as I transformed the walls using the most perfect trio of pink, black and white…It nearly broke me having to leave behind a majority of the baby clothes I had been saving to give to you when you had your own family…The last two months we lived at our house, I spent ridding our lives of hard evidence & proof of the lifetime we had lived there, having room in our apartment for only the memories we could carry in our hearts and heads. The last time we turned that door handle, locked the door, it was like closing of a coffin of our younger, more optimistic selves inside. It was hard, baby. I know that. In order to survive it, I had to look at logistics and practicalities…I had to wall my feelings off behind gates made of to-do lists & the task of building cheap, space-saving organizers ordered off Temu. If I let myself mourn, I wouldn’t have been able to function…and…well, someone had to function, to keep things upright…But I know that this left you to walk down the hallway of grief mostly on your own, fingers trailing the wall on either side of you…looking at pictures of what was gone…a museum of loss to navigate on your own. And coming out of the tornado of change, I can see how hard that must have been for you to do without your mom being your emotional airbag. I can only imagine how lonely it must’ve been for you to feel like your mom didn’t even understand or care about your feelings of loss, because she showed none of the grief she was feeling herself . I’m sorry for that, kiddo, so damned sorry. If time machines ran on the fuel of Apologies, I would’ve already done this better a second time around…but, yeah, real world.
In addition to the trauma of your address presto change-o, you were dealing with horrible bullying at school…Another student threatened to put you in the hospital, and the school did nothing upon you reporting it. Just another bead on a long strand of adults who failed you. When the issue escalated with the other student getting our home phone number and making harassing calls, I was able to get a proper response and get protections put in place. Then, your best friend was forced to move without any warning due to some dire family circumstances. I think about the friendships that ended this year in my own life and how angry it has made me. But to be 11 and lose your BFF suddenly through no fault of either party? With no closure? Heartbreaking…I know that feeling of an angry god reaching in the birdcage of your chest & just squeezing till there is nothing left but pulp and the sawdust of what used to be your dreams.
You could’ve responded with vitriol, venom…acting out…bitterness. Any of these responses would have been understandable, justified even. It’s a path of prickers I have walked on myself at times in life.
Instead, you fought against the hardness of your misfortune. I think about how you won a gift card at school for earning one of the highest scores on the state tests in your grade. You asked me to help you purchase things online using this gift card. One of the items you really wanted was an old Blur album. You love the Gorillaz and had recently become interested in Damon Albarn’s other projects, so I would play my favorite Blur tracks in the car for you. Sometimes I would wistfully mention how I had had all their CDs when I was with Alex, how we played them to death…. And you must’ve twigged the other side: how I was so sad to leave the CDs behind when I left Alex. So, I was excited to see you become interested enough in their music to order the CD for yourself. When it came in the mail I put it on your bed and, a little while later, I asked if you had listened to it. You smiled your crooked little 100 kilowatt smile and told me to look in my room. You had wrapped the CD and put it on my desk. You had actually used your gift card to purchase the CD for me. That was your intent all along. And this kindness, brightness, lovingness–this was you. All year. In the cruelest year of your young life.
At your 5th grade moving up ceremony, you won the award for your class for your Citizenship. In your teacher’s speech about why she picked you to win this award, Ms. McCarthy said, “This student is kind and respectful to her friends, classmates and staff members. She’s incredibly smart and well rounded. She can acknowledge when she’s having a bad day or something is bothering her and she knows how to handle it with grace. She is patient with herself and others. I have never once heard her speak badly of others. She goes above and beyond to lift her friends and those around her up. And she does all of this with a humble demeanor that is hard to believe comes from a 5th grader.” Instead of turning to bedrock, to granite, to marble–no, my special girl, you blossomed in the hardest of frozen ground, your beautiful petals defiantly soft in the face of a cold winter. THAT is strength…. Not the walling off your mother did.
There’s a quote by Louis Ferdinand Celine that I’ve always loved. It is from his book Journey to the End of the Night. “Maybe that’s what we look for all our lives, the worst possible grief, to make us truly ourselves before we die.” I have always used it as an explanation of how experiencing some of the misfortunes I have survived has given me permission to act in maladaptive ways in response. And maybe that has been my true self at times, I don’t know. If that quote is true (and I believe it to be so), I’m just heartachingly glad/grateful/infinitely proud that I’ve seen your true self. And it’s an amaryllis in the winter, reminding us that spring is coming & it is going to be so fucking beautiful. In fact: it refuses to be anything else.
Much love my strong, bright girl.
Love,
Mama
Song Choice: Promise by Tori Amos
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