End of April

Most wonderful dear Succotash, it's been a busy couple of weeks. Right now your are at Montessori, where you picked a dandelion and presented it with great pride to your teacher, and also you carried your stuffed otter inside the back of your t-shirt and showed it to your babyfriend. Outside the cherry blossoms burst out pink in just the past week and are already starting to drift down into the grass like soft pink snow. On Saturday the tulips in the garden were all closed tight when we got up in the morning, but while you and your dad paid a call on Miss Ruth and I lazed in the deck chair under the cherry tree, drinking coffee and listening to the cardinals shopping for a condo in the hemlock trees, the sun kissed them open one by one while I watched. Over the years the red tulips have cross-pollinated with the few rogue yellow ones, and so now they all have deep yellow cups inside their red petals.

Your Nana and Grandpa came for a visit, which was tough, as Nana's Alzheimer's is really getting hard on her. Hard on us too, who love her. I am having trouble letting go of the fantasy I had of the relationship you might have had with her, had things been different. But things aren't different - they are as they are. She loves you, as best she can, but you will have to learn about her brilliance and humor and insight from the stories I tell you, and from her writing, and from pictures of her, rather than from herself. Over the course of the visit she forgot my father's name. She was embarrassed. It's the disease, I told her, not you. Nobody thinks it's you. I feel like she is in there, trapped behind a haze of confusion and worry and fear. She cares very much for your development, and for your schooling, and for your overall wellbeing. While here she talked a lot about her will. I think she is worried about dying, but when I asked her "Mom, are you worried about dying?" she claimed she wasn't. Always big on deflection, my family. I have your dad to thank, I think, if I am better able to confront my feelings, and better able to validate yours, than I would otherwise have been. 

While they were here you had your first stomach bug. You were restless and moving around and driving me nuts one night, so I got up to rock you back to sleep. I jostled you over my shoulder and a veritable river of vomit came out of your poor mouth, launching us into a twelve hour odyssey of not keeping down either breast milk or water, and powering through many changes of clothes and sheets for you and me. We also had our first rush to the pediatrician. They finally guessed it must have been food poisoning. The night before we had all had fresh scallops your dad made for Grandpa's birthday, and you hoovered down a ton of them. Every last one of them came back up that night. My poor baby. 

We also had you evaluated for early intervention for not talking yet, and learned you qualify for services. I discovered that I thoroughly hated having you evaluated. They were perfectly nice and professional, but I couldn't stand having strangers Zoom in and demand you perform little tasks and then pass judgement on you with only a couple of minutes of watching you and not actually knowing you at all. I was surprised, how much I hated it. Your dad is uneasy about involving the state in our family life, and upon reflection and discussion with other parents and friends we have decided to forego intervention for now and give you a little more time. The truth is, every single toddler we know, most of whom are older than you, isn't talking. No one has been a toddler in a pandemic in which everyone wears masks over half their faces before. You spend half your time at school, where you can't see anyone speak. You understand everything, you can follow multi-step directions, and you are getting good at expressing what you would like to have happen - climbing into your stroller and saying "walk!" or bringing us our shoes and hats because you want to go play outside. Right now I choose to have faith in your native intelligence, and in changes in the offing when you move up to the toddler room this summer.

Anyhoo. Those two things, plus visiting high-need grandparents, and also revisions due on mama's book meant for a somewhat stressful couple of weeks for your loving parents. But now the flowers are blooming, last night you and your dad and I had dinner on the porch at the yacht club, in a few days we will have our second vaccine shots, and the boat will go in the water. I cannot wait for a lazy summer with you, watching you grow and explore and change and maybe, start talking? Soon? 

I can't wait to hear everything that you have to say.