a beautiful life photo

“already one day has detached itself from all the rest up ahead.

it has my photograph in its soft pocket.

it wants to carry my breath into the past in its bag of wind”

- charles wright

my dear littlest,

your mommy is heaviness and light. you seem to be getting the hang of it. living with me, being who you are with someone feeling your every breath, helping you take the deep ones, trying to let you go, remembering your hand in mine as i hold it. you make me feel all the shades of grey at once for the rainbow they are. you are all bended light. you are a story in which we feel suspended, where every second is everything, where we are love and skin and now.

i am grateful for the way you build a world and fall apart in a moment. our tangled souls are getting a workout. how you see your imagination roll like film on a projector, and nothing can reach you, the picture is that vivid. then in a blink, you are “a danger to self and society” as mommy says, and full on love is the only antidote, the only intervention. you are the roller coasters you speak of with longing. you are the little boy whose stomach can only handle the slightest swoop of the pendulum on a swing. you are gravity and the dream of flying. you are the gentle, close, humid warmth leaving my arm asleep with you every night, and the breeze left in your fleeing wake. you are the arc of love as it stretches across my heart, and you are the very heart beneath it.

taking care of you is my anchor. from there you are hooked into my skin. it is the point of light from which all else is born, strong enough to reach the surface. heavy, but as true as i know. carrying you, your head on my shoulder, your legs wrapped around my waist, is a weight that keeps me tethered here, and sets me free. it is the beautiful paradox that always made my head hurt. because i was so close to understanding, but it had not yet devoured me.

i know i must finish this, as you just came up to me, got between me and the screen, and kissed me with your perfect chapped lips and apple breath. and then my nose. and then each eye. just like i do to you. and there is the pulse of my world in one tiny gesture that is too big for this world. so here i will end, without the list of details i have been saving up for our memories. because you need me, and that makes me, me. you make me the crazy, patient, singing, spinning, pulling my hair out with pure joy mommy i am. you are my equal and opposite action, in miracle form.

and i love you like wildfire.

mommy

this is one link in a monthly project with some other wonderfully diverse and devoted mothers, writing to their precious kids. next is Tabitha Patrick

“somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near”

- e.e. cummings

every year on his birthday, i have to face my own. so in this thousandth way, he sets me free. and i try with no luck to remember who i was before him. and i run my fingers through the summer sea of his hair and remember i do not have to. born together into this one life, it is as easy as telling the truth.

two nights away from our house, as a gift, a deep breath, a pause, a slowness. two nights i lay awake in a cocoon of white sheets and four feet rubbing themselves to sleep, like tiny wings making a night song, my own reaching for their lullaby. i do not have to tell myself to remember these things anymore. this kind of awake is part of the bones i have made myself, growing them, being a shepherd, an audience, a sun, a moon. in the most still times, there is a buzz under my skin. fear and love in one swift current. and in the wildest, i am still, in the longest second, stretching out through time. the beginning of love is a circle, and i am forever dizzy.

being away with them, i am always home. we carry it on our backs and in our blood, on our skin with the salt of tears and wind, with the rituals and stories and birthdays we remember like our favorite song. i don’t mind the getting older as long as his life dances circles around mine. the morning of my birthday i woke up early and felt the kind of happy that pushes tears down your face, in its spilling over. i smelled the incense smell of his hair, the trace of sunscreen and ocean, the breath from his parted lips, still sweet to me. i watched his sister beside him and let my breath meet theirs as it rose and fell in our fragile, full chests. i took a picture of the feeling. this is what it looks like.

i have been a part of this lifestyle project for five months, and i savor the pictures, the people, the lives i have grown to know and love through it. Wendy VonSosen has a heart of gold, with a beautiful family and many gifts. she is a lovely friend whom i admire deeply. and she is next.

“tonight they have not moved from childhood, those games played after dark.
again i walk into the wet grass
toward the starry voices. again, i
am the found one, intimate, returned
by all i touch on the way.”

- tess gallagher

my girl,

the days are spinning by and making me dizzy. i do this unconscious thing when i look at you. i see you as a spectrum, of time, of light, of goodness as it grows into grace. i see the roots of you and the becoming, all part of the same tree, the same seed that split and cracked me open into love. you live in me, as calm and peace, worry and delirium, hope and fight. the trail you leave, every morning of the week when we drop you at school, like a hint of lavender and smoke and the sea in your hair. everything grounded and all pure spirit, in one hit. and i miss you like wildfire. just the way i love you. i miss you during the day, when you sleep, when you are lost in all of the making you do. i will miss you when we talk circles around everything, and i light up a hundred times at the countless twists and loops and dances we do with words, spinning together, arms locked. my heart will break with this missing, as i want to save you like this, full of everything which is kind and knowing. i will do my missing now, instead of later when you need to be set free.

i do not remind you of things, or pull your strings, or tell you what to think. i watch you find your way, in a rhythm that makes sense. i ask you to read, then watch with wonder at how you consume and change and celebrate the wings ideas give you. i ask you to ask. to question as much as you need and then more. and i will answer honestly what i can, and find my way to the best ones when i cannot. and with your wide open mind you have never disappointed me. never be afraid you will. with anything. the only time i will ever put my hand on your shoulder is if i see you losing your voice. the voice that still sounds three to me, but feels fifty in the things it says. use it in any way you can. you will only regret not singing. and the singing you do with it these days is like taking a deep dive and then coming up for air. it comes from somewhere else. from you, as it is a place. from the place in my own memory at which i held the most hope. you my sweetest one, are from somewhere better. you live in the very center of the world, and hold its heart like a tiny bird. it is impossible not to love every child in the world, being your mama. the way you elevate and level me in one look, in each tiny kindness, you reach for the love in us and pull it out with your hands behind your back.

i remember third grade like i am seeing it through thick glass. learning about native americans, writing my first real essays, memorizing shel silverstein, a too short haircut, feeling like every mark i made could not be perfect enough. i never knew what was coming, and i wanted to meet life with the very best of me. the kind of best it would take years and years to be. this picture of mama is the sharp edge to your soft wave. as much as i loved that year, my fondest memories fade in the clarity of you, right now. i see more of myself now in you, than i do when i travel back twenty two years. i really cannot figure out if you are learning from me, i from you, or if we reflect off of each other. our origins are braided with our hands, time, shared hearts.

we all love you the best, in the way you’ve taught us, as the best of us. in that way that feels like swallowing wind in summer. it is warm and full and always moving to a new place. you are going to be a mover, a wanderer, a seeker. you are going to want to be the light that leaks from cracks, the hand that reaches out, the first one to smile and help. you tell me you are never getting married. you are saving yourself for the world. and when i share the air around you, i almost believe the world has not happened yet. that it is waiting for you too. it is so likely that love is waiting too, in whatever form you will receive it. know that mine is dancing through every cell of you. you will never have to miss me.

i loved you first,

mama

(contax 645, portra 400, fuji 400h, ilford delta 3200 and loads of kindness and patience)

i love being a part of this group of mothers. it is impossible to keep your eyes dry reading their letters, or your heart heavy, knowing them. next is a woman whose life is like a rainbow, whose pictures are beautiful and epic, and whose heart is as deep and real as they come, Kirsty Larmour.

some things you know all your life. they are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.

- philip levine

my sweetest boy,

there is so much “we” these days. no more “i” and “me”. you are a part of something and you know it. you want it. you embrace it with your wild and gentle heart. “we are going to jump on these pillows. and it’s going to be beautiful!” you say, believing it with every bit of still two. you will never be alone in this world because i live inside you. i keep a part of myself there. a part i know as well as my memories of love, and the pregnant hope of you. we will be we as long as you are you.

you are talking up a story these days. one detail holds the hand of the next, and it feels as if they are ours when i listen. you talk about spider silks, your very curious favorite thing, spinning from your eggshell mind so fragile and strong. i spin in circles with you as you lead me into new worlds, the wind in our hair, hope high, eyes open, together. for the first time. everything is for the first time, i cannot escape it, never bored, always tired, ever happy, and i have your enthusiasm to thank. i feel like i am at the very center of alive. heavy and still like when you were swimming inside me. like you are the storm and i am chasing it, while i feel it under my skin.

moment to moment lived as a revelation. you turn classic mr. roger’s neighborhood into something that belongs on broadway, you ask me how trains can have baby trains, you play your tiny guitar, with the crazy chords that sometimes make sense, and your angel voice which finds the lyrics to all the songs we love. your mixed up prepositions make me smile so big, i would practically throw my precious grammar out the window. you mix up the world in new ways that take hold; you are pigment of red earth and petals upon this canvas we share.

today i saw i tiny hint of blue around your lips, from your raspberry popsicle, and it hit me how you are growing too free to notice these little things which you have always wanted fixed, righted. i was telling poppy last week how you are tortured by your socks, on this nagging quest to have things straight and perfect, just like i had, years ago. “oh, we all fuss about these things!”, he said. “no”, i told him, “i think maybe it’s just US.” and you do have the very veins of all of us, but me mostly. this gift of patience for which i bless you, i want it to free you. because finding it with you has freed me, littlest one. you have freed me from so many versions of myself that had to be, to lead me right here. right here in the final throes of two with you, and your warm, languid limbs, finding there home with mine as you talk in your dark blue sleep.

“i love you mommy.” and i tell you i love you too. “what are you doing here, mommy?” and i answer, “i’m being your mommy.” it is our call and response, our way of saying “i’m okay, are you okay?” it is our way of breathing together, a punctuation, a prayer. so many circles of this each day. so many more reasons to say it.

where are you going you wild and wondrous boy of my soul? i will follow you anywhere. i will follow you into the light, the dark, the new day, the past, the blurry fog of the future. i will keep my eyes on the ground and to the sky. i will feel for the path in front of us. i will watch for signs above.

you are my littlest world, and i love you more than the biggest ones,

mommy

 (all images shot with kodak portra 400, and ilford delta 3200, contax 645)

you will not be disappointed when you visit the ever amazing, talented, and lovely Summer Murdoch. she is a good friend and a wonderful mom.

“already one day has detached itself from all the rest up ahead. it has my photograph in its soft pocket.
it wants to carry my breath into the past in its bag of wind.

i write poems to untie myself, to do penance and disappear through the upper right-hand corner of things, to say grace.”

- charles wright

last week snow was upon us, in our hair, stored inside, folded carefully and tucked away, maybe for years. it lasted all of an hour, but as we drove up and up, into the thin air, our noses pressed against the glass, watching the brown and green angles dusted with whirling white. even as my son started to turn, the altitude weakening his stomach and joy, we turned around full of some kind of cold, clean hope. “how do we know snowflakes are all different?” asked my daughter, “even all people are part of the same family.” i understand her questions, and i love her take on us all, wrapped in one blanket of vastness and closeness that i will never completely understand. and i understand the force of newness that snow gave us, to prompt her mind to push the reset button, start from scratch with a free canvas. all of this love and world feel too big to fit inside. it spills out, it folds us in, it lifts us up and beyond. new eyes spur new hearts, and this trip to the mountains opened mine, anew.

most days, it is everything. all in one breath. but when we are together as an extended family, we swallow the sadness of absence, of missing someone who isn’t here, and live for him too. with roots like these, there is no clean getaway. there is no starting over. there are only the tiny choices and gifts of responsibility, the chances we take to hold on tighter or find the cracks of light. even in dark rooms, that is enough to see the whole world outside.

the beauty is in the trying, and the trying together. we are taking a giant hit of hope. our innocence is claimed with everything in us, undeniable, nothing twisted or torn. we are piecing together mornings and trips and stories and meals and new places with new air and freedom. this is what it looks like. we are finding our way by the light of the love in our hearts. who knows where it will take us. maybe back here…

this is one post in an incredible circle of lifestyle photographers, each with her own special voice. please do yourself a favor and visit the spectacularly talented Lindsey Bergstrom, Boulder, CO Photographer. her images are art.

“but now the stark dignity of entrance — still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken.”

- william carlos williams

my wonderful girl of the world,

you are on the verge of everything. i cannot stop you. your heart and life are spilling over. you are nine now.

you are at your first sleepover party tonight, and i miss you. i miss you now, i miss you as a toddler, i am missing you already as a sixteen year old. i sing you “the circle game” at night, like i have been doing for all of our years as us. but the ache of time, against my own spirit and skin – it is nothing compared with watching you grow and spin beyond me. you know joni mitchell through my voice, as i knew her first through grammy. i sing and i cry, and try to hide the little chokes and gasps. i try to hide the longing, when it comes in this way, though it has always been there, even when you were closest. especially then.

today we were dancing in the kitchen, our family tradition, and i held you close like i want to all the time. something almost magic happened. i went back in time. i smelled your baby smell, pure and electric and heavy as my longest memory. it hit me like soft lightening. i was holding your hands but it could have been the weight of you against my chest, breathing in the sweet, powdery fresh air on the forehead i have stroked to sleep hundreds of times. we were you and me, when there was only you and me. and we can always be this way, we can visit this place together, our secret garden, grown over with new time, lives, stories. we are sacred.

since you were an infant, i have reached back to you in the car. our hand hugs. no words, but when i feel you, i feel a thousand points of light. some days, these days, you get snagged, you feel edgy. i tell you it’s your body talking, not your head or your heart. and when so many other little girls would brush me off, or wouldn’t even need these kind of words yet, you understand them, and all that they mean. new rocks appear, but you are always that smooth running stream, clear and pure. we are finding our new way, with the way we have always had between us. “come on sweetie,” i say. “let’s give in to life’s current.” and you look at me with compassion, with thanks, knowing, and comfort. and you reach for my hand.

nine years in this world and you are everything of this world to me. you have been so much in the world, you belong to it, it belongs to you. you were never just mine. it was never a question for me, how to shelter you. from the second you could crawl i have watched you go, a bird taking off. i will be the best of me, the most free, i will never deny you myself. you are a learner and a teacher, hungry for everything, the words, the feelings, the pictures, the secrets that move us forward and away and closer and through. and the grace of your patience, the way you glide through the shifty turns and make us all easier, lighter, kinder. you disarm, you lift up, and all in one gentle smile. the goodness of you is a revelation. no one is a lost cause. no one around you will ever feel alone. i have never seen you fail, but i have to remind you you will, and it may shock you, but it will likely be an arrow in the direction you need to go. because as much as you love to soar, as you get older, you are going to learn to climb, to stretch yourself, to find new worlds. to make them.

you make me believe. you found me when i was spent and worn out and pushing my way out of my box. the first time i really saw you, i saw everything, i saw faith. i know what a promise is, baby. you are a promise i will keep. we are growing together, like vines toward the sun. i have your back, your heart, your hand.

i loved your first. you ARE love

mama

this is just one letter in a circle of beautiful mothers and photographers who all adore their girls. i so encourage you to visit my friend rashmi pappu, who has a mind and heart that blow me away. she cares about the world as much as she cares about her own piece of it. her daughters are in the finest hands….

on days like these,
i stand for a long time
under the wild gnarled root of the ancient wisteria,
dry twigs that in a week
will manage a feeble shower of purple blossom,
and i believe it: this is all there is,
all history’s brought us here to our only life
to find, if anywhere,
our hanging gardens and our street of gold:
cracked stoops, geraniums, fire escapes, these old
stragglers basking in their bit of sun.

- katha pollit

one evening to the next one, away and home, light and dark, we feel that pull of back and forth, but we hold on together. i remember as a kid, being away from home brought an initial exhilaration, for a couple of hours maybe. then, i felt i had lost my mooring. my mom and dad were home to me, and it was impossible to imagine otherwise. a clean bed, the soft voices and inside jokes, the dog and cat and their comical neuroses, our books and rhythms and quiet, the reluctant smiles my brother could draw from nothing. we were experts on how to be here. it was a place but a state of existence from which we sprung our roots. when my daughter was tiny, i would pat her chest and mine, and tell her, “mama is always here with you, wherever you are, however old you are, no matter what. and you are with me. our hearts are full of each other.” but even then, i think i was talking myself into it. she believed it though, and over the years spent laced into her heart and life and dreams, she is my center of gravity. and the gentle boy who is always at my feet and hand, his being born was an invitation to settle in to my own skin, to trust my own sense of direction. he has set the compass, she keeps my feet on the ground. and we make our home. we carry it on our backs, it runs through the blood we share as a gift, we write the story of it, we live as each others sense of place.

in every bright morning or tired shift of light, they are new, awash in it. we are rocked back and forth by the nights and days, into comfort, into ourselves. with them in the world, i will never again be homesick. i will build their home from love and time and memory, and set it free into the air, and we will watch it go, knowing it is all around us.

breanna peterson is next in this circle. she is a kind and good person, with a magic eye. the way she sees her family, and the light around them, is amazing.

“when i open my eyes i discover the peaceful blank of the ceiling. its old paint-layered surface is moonwhite

and trackless, like the Sea—-of Tranquility.”

- may swenson

this is what closeness looks like. and it is sustained, totally aligned with instinct, made whole by love, lifted up, protected. i have never been surer. i have said to myself a hundred times, “oh, i wish someone could take pictures of us when you take your bath,after your bath. our favorite time.” and i will feel these memories on my skin, they will be tattooed in my heart, with pictures like dense spirals of smoke. but on this day, i decided to make them. and why do i love these? because they are true. because this was not a set up. i took these for us. i hardly remember the camera being there. we needed quiet, after a week of fevers and longs nights and early mornings and tears. he is wading the waters between baby and boy, and it is fragile and in full bloom. the thing that i would tell a new mother, right before her baby was born, would be how insanely close and physical it is to love a child. the heat, the hugs, the weight of them, the incense smells they give off, the perception that they are of our own skin, long after they leave it. and so this is what he looks like, as that feeling wraps around my heart like a wave, curled and forceful and unstoppable.

the hardest comfort for me to give up would be hot baths. they transport me, they physically will me to give in to the fact that i am right here, wherever that may be. the next hardest will be the day when he doesn’t ask me to hold him, warm and clean and pure, after his. i would never be able to find my way back from him but i could find my way to him, with my arms tied, in the darkest dark, just knowing he was in this world.

this is one entry in an incredible and diverse circle of photographers, sharing what lifestyle photography looks like to them. next is Kara May, Scottsdale Children’s Photographer

“i felt tears come into my eyes, absurdly, because i knew that summer had peaked and already was passing away. i felt very close then to understanding the mystery; it seemed to me that i almost knew what it meant to be alive, as if my life had swelled to some high moment of response, as if i could reach out and touch the season, as if i were inside its body, surrounded by sweet pulp and juice, shimmering veins and ripening skin.

- carolyn miller, from “a warm summer in san francisco”

my one and only girl,

you were born perfect. the impact of which never loses its fire. your head on grammy’s shoulder, as i took in every angle of you, the grace of every movement: eyes open like full moons, neck held high and sweeping the landscape for beauty, for information. it said so much about who you will always be. i held you then, and heard the voices around me, singing songs of praise and wonder. i kissed you with my eyes. i made wishes i never knew i could make. you are the beginning of everything. my eyes were born with you.

i have this vivid memory of nursery school: i was four, the teacher played us mozart and asked us to draw the music. it felt so free. i even remember the colors i chose, green and purple and blue. this is what you do to me. you are the spark for all of the good stored up inside. you remind me of that girl i was, because i see the exquisite girl you are. a mirror of time, a reflection of the future, a reminder to hope. baby, you draw the music all day long. you dance to it as you walk, you bless us all with it as we work, wish, and struggle. you are the soundtrack to all of this for me. a new way to live with the music that is such a huge part of me. those certain, flowing lines i was able to draw at four, they got harder as i got bigger and more complicated. things got cloudy for a while, things got dark and twisty. part of me wants to keep these things to myself, to hope that nothing but purity and light ever touches you. but the open windows are what lets in all that light between the two of us. it helps you see, be less afraid, know the strong shape of your shadow, see the paper as you make your bold, knowing marks upon it, drawing pictures of what you look like on the inside.

poppy always talks about kaleidoscope shifts. i love the metaphor and think of it many times a day. that all we need is the tiniest bit of light, and all the colors and shifts and shape is up to us. you cracked me open, at a time when the shell was so thick i thought nothing could. you taught me that if i changed the world around me, i would have no use for it. and we grew and grew together like vines toward the sun. and the light you let in to my life lets me see every color in the world. i want to see you among them, and will move any mountain you ask me to move. if it ever gets dark for you, and all of us will feel some hint of this, remember that we are never alone in being alone. that simply going through a trial bonds you to everyone who has struggled or stumbled or tripped. and i am always there loving you, with my belief and arms and memories. that love makes magic, like flint and steel. it will find the air, it will always breathe, you will always find your way.

“mama, i just can’t stop saying i love you!”; you actually say this. i am the luckiest person to be born, with you here. love. is. everything. this is the season of you. i can’t stop saying it either.

and remember i loved you first,

mama

(and thank you for being you, for your incredible patience that allowed us to make these pictures. the first time on the contax 645, driving myself crazy trying to focus, having you in front of me, to talk, to inspire, to make something so difficult and new feel like part of the wonderful flow you bring to everything.)

this is one letter in a chain of love letters by some incredible hearts, minds, and talents. i am bowled over with gratitude, calling these women friends. next is Courney Keim.

“again and again, driving on a lonely, moonlit road, or waking in a warm murmurous night, i hear that voice singing that common song like an angelic memory.”

- kenneth rexroth

my littlest,

this is the love letter you would write.

talking about you means talking about the collective “you”. she is the sun you orbit. and you are her little earth. there is gravity between you. there is no air, only love.

“you are MY girl” you say. you are lassoed to her. you tell her stories in a voice that comes from deep within you, with all of your trying and concentration, utterly sincere, an open window. the names you make up for her, they stick; we all use them now. your love and all of its gifts are like magnets as she comes to you, her heart open, never able to resist. you save the best for her, and she gives you her time and imagination, in every single breath. when i watch you together, i swear i see you growing, the synapses forming, your eyes getting bigger and wiser and more hungry. you are reaching toward her light.

i want to tell you something else my little heart. she was the map to the way i love you. when you came to me, i knew how big this was going to get. i knew how close i would want you forever, and the love you would make like magic. she was right there with me, falling in love with you before you were born into this crazy world. and you were really born in our hearts, as she talked to mommy’s belly and kissed you every night. she imagined you into being, she missed you before you were here, and you have only made her world more real and full. you are loved by the most beautiful soul i’ve ever met, and loved purely, with grace and devotion and freedom.

all of the times a day when i have to catch my breath, when you overtake my heart, when i have to pull you close to prove you are real…your sister understands. the awe is everywhere, it is woven into our souls. we love whoever you are, we love the beautiful mirror you provide us. you help us both stay young, curious, new, expectant. you give us these glimpses into eternity. you are parentheses in the chaos that the world becomes when we look too far. with every quirky question and spontaneous dance, your perfectly timed jokes and the way you know when a hug will wash over it all, you are building our faith. just yesterday i kept noticing the way you run everywhere, using your whole body, twisting with the sweetest rhythm. i though to myself “this will not last”. it hit me like a wave of fear and gratitude, and stopped me in my fragile tracks. because none of this will last. we may end. we will. but these parts of us, these graceful movements and progressions in our lives, they matter. the beauty of love’s particularities make it all unique, compelling, and so very worth the stirrings in our souls.

my two notes in perfect living harmony, dancing inside me, holding hands, pulling my heart outside my body, where it belongs, right where i found it. with you it was born. you are one heart.

i love you more than the world,

your forever mommy

this is one link in a fantastic circle of all different moms and voices. tabitha patrick always has beautiful ways to photograph her kids.

in silence there is eloquence. stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.

- rumi

so few things allow us to watch them grow, in real time, before our eyes. stillness on the outside keeps the dance of change on the inside a secret. and that is how our days seem to feel. all of these little motions are the inverse of these sweeping movements inside of us. these quiet days, tiny outings, so much waiting, fresh air and real smiles. it makes a fabric, well worn and familiar. i hardly want to take it off, even when i remember wilder times, the big world, all of that new light…

i don’t always remember the big things, the birthday parties and the new year’s eves, the anniversaries and the holidays. but i do remember the feeling of these rises and falls, the rhythms and cadences that love plays for us in every key, the small things that feel huge as they lap against the edges of my heart. in all this sweetness, in these subtle beats, lies life. in all of these close ups, i know him, i love him, i will remember being this tiny boy’s mother.

next in this circle is breanna peterson who not only lives in one of the most beautiful places in the world, but could make anywhere in the world seem beautiful.

the world spins. we stumble on. it is enough.

- colum mccann

this is what this magic “we” feels like. the beauty of this life is in the trying, and this is what it looks like to me. we are taking a giant hit of hope, undeniable, innocent, nothing twisted or self-righteous. we are for each other. the way we move through our days, laced together, our souls mixed as if in a cloud. they have built me into this mother i am, layer by layer of stories and strength and love. so this “we” feels better than anything ever has. we make room for the hurting and the loss and the hoping. we push things aside and rearrange and rethink, take a deep breath and make room for all the life and remembering and hard work. we make room for that extra air we need. because love needs to breathe.

time seems to loop around itself every day. with my eyes open, everything is let in. their childhoods and mine are parallel lines, stretching out into the light together. my brother and i holding hands with them. i feel my parents with me, through me, their kindness and gentleness a blanket passed down. i feel the bizarre asymmetry of the life we wear comfortably now, and the life my daughter and i lived through when she was tiny. i miss my brother and yet know him more intimately and beautifully than i ever have. i have faith that he knows we baked him a cake last week for his birthday, talked about life and death, that he can see the calluses i am slowly building with my guitar, and hear when we all sing to him together. the things i want back, i will always have them. the things i have wanted to push away forever, have been the darkness against this crazy light i feel on my skin as i write this.

there is always music playing for me. my heart beats to it, i dream it, it brings back chapters and feelings and smells as if they are bottled together in my mind. there are songs that go along with the moments here, the chords woven with their voices, each of us a note that fits with the other. i have this vivid memory of nursery school, four years old, the teacher played us mozart and asked us to draw to the music. this is what you do to me. this month and every other, we are a song, together with our pictures.

this is what everything looks like at once, as it comes at us and we breathe it in, in one breath. this is the thing of it. love is the beginning and end of all of my sentences, and as i repeat them, remembering this, i get closer to knowing something true.

this is just one link in an amazingly talented and diverse circle…please visit my wonderful friend Shalonda Chaddock, who inspires me all the time with her huge heart and talent.

it’s love, they say. you touch the right one and a whole half of the universe wakes up, a new half.

- william stafford

i listened to you talk at bedtime tonight. every word a new ledge to cling to, a new view to see. i wonder how long this will last, how it will change, if you will stay open like this crazy, beautiful flower that you are now. my mind wanders to all the imagining of you that i did while your body was still inside me, yet to be born. i think of the story that would be, if i could go back eight years and meet you now, for one evening, here like this. we would know each other; i believe this. you are the parts of me that i have forgotten, like losing letters to someone i loved, then hearing the words spoken. you wake up the person i need to be. and yet you are a universe all your own, with intuition that could guide the moon, pull the tides of hearts, bear stars.

you are a natural at life. gifts are woven through every inch of you. do not let this overwhelm you, or make you afraid, or feel the need to be what we all think you can be. but you will not do this. you will break rules to make better ones, decorate maps to make them more real to you, listen to the curiosity that keeps you talking and reading and playing and wondering even as you sleep. learning is all the time, and you know this like only a a handful of people i have ever met. they were all people who made my soul want to dance outside my body. i might be able to teach you with my stories, but you will teach me more, you will pass me as you take off and find your wings. i am going to take notes every day, let all of the words and feelings find me, your little presents, and write them down and fold the paper into a star, and give it to you one day…throw it into the sky. love stories write themselves in our veins and run through us. i am finally learning to be still and feel and listen. you have thrown off that wisdom like light, and i feel it through my bones.

there is this peace at the end of the day, like being underwater with the sun above us. and the language that we both love comes alive, it dances, though we do not even need the sounds. we are parallel lines, walking side by side, holding hands. sometimes i am eight too, when we talk. you are the friend who brings magic to my life, whom i want to be, whom i want to love me, who is braver and kinder and softer than i will ever be. we were born together, the time doesn’t matter. i could do this forever, hugging you, your hair wet and clean and sweet, tighter than i would expect, against me. i want you even tighter, but i want you as free as it gets…

everything that comes in your life will just be light and shadows. you will have the choice of where to look, where to live, who you are. sometimes everything comes at once, and you will take it in one breath. even if it doesn’t hurt, you will feel it, strong and undeniable, often beautiful. you dance at the core of everything. you are moderation that is beautiful, to my zigzagging emotions. you will still be you, breathing, watching, moving through it, no matter what comes, with light dancing over your face.

i loved you first.

mama

this letter is just one, in an amazing circle of talented, sincere, brilliant mothers. jaime lackey is one of them. her heart and vision and bond with her kids is awesome, http://www.jaimelackeyphotography.com/blog/sameness-letters-to-our-daughters/

 

so while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this god, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.
the joy that isn’t shared, i’ve heard,
dies young.

- anne sexton

my littlest,

being your home has become mine. i can see the wild and sweet and impetuous little girl i was, in who you are. you are the mirror to my soul. you give me so many gifts. patience, for anything at anytime. patience for myself after all these years. i fell in love with you and accepted who i was in the same breath. the night you were born, singing josh ritter lullabies, tears down my face, slow dancing with the best partner i had ever had, and knowing how very big this was all going to get. i had broken through my shell, i had burst into blossom, we were a star being born.

we share a heart. you are my little boy reflection. i catch myself laughing at us together, our temperaments are twins. and then i hear myself, all the little allusions and literary references and bits of irony that i throw into the stream of love chatter, and i love that you smile and giggle at all the right moments, your sense of timing already perfect. so many things catch with you. the tiny lift of a voice or the slightest smile. and you make jokes, funny ones. you may be the youngest little one to weave sarcasm into his humor. and the stories you ask for as you fall asleep…you always hold my hand, the same way you have since infancy. when mommy was little, like you, i would beg grammy to construct long and specific ones, with doc from ‘the love boat’, someone getting injured, and alex, my fiance at three. you are just the same, like someone fed you the script. but it is pirates for you, da da da dah/superman, uncle p, poppy, your sister. we both love the rhythm of it, the words, the sounds, the way we whisper together in time, taking turns, feeling the beautiful balance between us.

we welcomed this new year together…you were my kiss, on the back of your sweet shampoo head – warm and close, sick and hurting but really so content. because you are the best place to be. i need to memorize the way it feels to breathe you in. the weight of you, the warmth, the shape of your damp palms curling around mine, the hint of incense that magically radiates from your skin, like a sweet baby campfire. i hope you will feel this comfort that has been so hard won, that i wear like soft armor, that i want everyone around me to feel. you are fiery and feel things full force, but i am going to keep holding your hand when you need a safe place, a breath, a reminder. let’s not battle ourselves. let’s be open and new and free as the wind, never even having to reach for each other. we ARE each other my littlest.

when your sister was a baby, a veil lifted and i saw what could be. i saw the best of the world, the divine in one soul. and when you came to me, i was already awake. but you saved me, in so many ways, that are hard to explain to a tiny boy. i think you feel them though, and feel the enormity and purity of my love. i will repay you every day, in every way i can. as i took a bath last night, i sat there and listened to you and your sister, thinking “they are my favorite song.” you name your entire motley crew of toys, make a whole world, your tiny voice so committed to all of it, to us, to this world of love we try to give you. in you, i am happy. despite so much that i want to change, decisions i cannot make again, you are happiness, right here, right now.

as you always say to me, so many times a day, “i want YOU.”

i love you my sweetest blessing,

mommy

i am participating in this project with a group of beautiful mothers and photographers who will be writing to their children every month. the idea was inspired by my amazing friend Amy Lucy and she has practically inspired a movement.

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.

- e.e. cummings

 

so i have broken the rules here, but breaking the rules is so often right. i have cried like there is no world beneath my feet this week, and then i have felt so wholly content and full of the love that rushes as if in a vacuum. spinning, but on an axis to which i am firmly affixed. it’s love. love and hope that come when all of the rules have changed, enough times in my life that i now expect it. there will be awful pain but some kind of light will follow it, and when it does, i may not even recognize myself.

today marked a year that my brother has been gone. we needed something fresh to match the peace that has been slowly growing in my heart. every time i felt tears i was smiling too. it is full on truth. we played hooky this afternoon, and the kids were chanting this together. after what may have been his grouchiest day on record, my boy woke up with a halo, easy and loving and made of sugar. and we picked up his sister before lunch at school, and began our drive to the ocean, and i could breathe like my lungs were new. there was wind and mist and rain, and not having to anticipate any discord. wet feet and crazy whipping hair, french fries and sandy mouths, the grateful dead and brandenburg concertos, the sense of moving through a day in slow motion but a lightness for which i am always grateful. he was here. not “in my heart” here, but sharing them, loving them, making them laugh, teaching them through me, here. and it swelled and stung my heart.

taking pictures happened without thinking. it always starts with a feeling, but today, i almost forgot to think about making something. we were making a memory and offering it as a gift. we ended our night with the kids watching videos of themselves on my phone, flipping through pictures, wrapped in one towel. the last things they said nearly broke me open….”i love you. you are amazing…”, she whispered to him, beside herself in the moment. and not thirty seconds later, “hey mommy! “picture uncle p.j.!” they make living as easy on me as i have ever known it. broken but in blossom.

please continue in this fresh and special circle of photographers and visit the amazing breanna peterson, breanna peterson photography, kodiak alaska  http://www.breannapeterson.com/2013/01/10/10-on-10/