To My Daughter, On Her Second Birthday.
Pres,
Today is your second birthday.
Right on time, just outside the front door, the camellia tree is starting to bloom. Those flowers will forever and always remind me of you, how all good things are worth the wait.
You have spent almost your entire second year of life under house arrest, like a little queen locked in a castle. You learned to walk in quarantine, toddling across the same floors day after day, the same patch of lawn in the yard. Even still, every morning, a smile stretches across your face for hours on end, like this is the only adventure you’ve ever wanted—to be here, with us. Putting Cheerios into toy teacups and reading books on the floor, excitedly emptying every drawer you can open as if it were full of treasure and not Tupperware.
You’ve started saying, here, mommy!—holding offerings up to me several times a day. A bottle of nail polish, a marble, a goldfish cracker you found under the kitchen table. You open my closet door and pull out every single shoe. Here, mommy! Here, mommy! Here, mommy! You hand me each one with purpose, dedicated to the practice, until my closet is empty and there are 12 pairs of shoes piled on the bed where I am sitting, laptop warming my legs, trying to work and enjoy you at the same time. Later when you are in bed, I will put all 12 pairs back, as I did the day before, and the day before.
Every day, you rip the house apart.
Every night, we put it back together.
You love to read. I find you all over the house, plopped down in the most random places with a book in your lap, studying the pictures. You’ve memorized a few lines from your favorites and actually say the right words on the correct pages. It would be an impressive party trick, if we were attending parties.
The few times we’ve taken you somewhere, you have only wanted to run, as if you’re tasting freedom for the first time and want to gulp it down. We took you to the park, the Christmas tree lot, an open field for family photos. You ran away without looking back, your hair blowing in the wind, laughing hysterically like you knew how wild it was, to be outside with no fence, no boundaries, to be that free, that liberated.
It’s easy for me to feel sad about all that’s been taken from you, from us, over the past year. I think of little, insignificant things—like the joy of riding in a shopping cart, attending story time at the library, having playdates with friends your own age. You don’t even know what you’ve missed, and I take comfort in that. Every day is Disneyland with these toys, those brothers, that old faded trampoline you’ve jumped on hundreds of times.
But lately I’ve had another thought that makes me sad. While you missed out on all the world had to offer last year, the world also missed out on you. Your smile, your laugh, the way you call Cheerios “cheeries”—you are a bottle of pure sunshine, portable joy. I wish I could knock on every door and let every human on earth be in your jubilant presence for five minutes. Like a therapy dog, only better.
When the world feels dark (and it has felt dark), you are a consistent bright light. Grounding us here, in this house, demanding our attention, our love, our presence.
You are the gift that keeps on giving.
How would we have survived the past year without your laughter, your antics, the sound of your tiny feet running down the hall?
I’ve been thinking so much about timing, and how God is the only one who truly knows it, understands it, perfects it … the one who orchestrates every detail, every rainbow, every split second a ladybug is spotted under a chair. And I’ve been thinking about you, how long I waited, how long I prayed, how many years I begged God for a daughter. And wasn’t it kind of Him to line up those stars, for you to be born the same week the camellia tree blooms, for you to learn to walk and talk and say I love you in the darkest year of our lives.
It is enough to make me weep.
Happy birthday, sunshine girl. I love you, I love you, I love you.
