This is how I say I love you
On Motherhood: The main thing is not to hurry
I love you in all the ways I don’t say and all the ways I do. In all the ways you don’t yet understand but someday will.
When you were a baby I would hold you for as long as you wanted me to, zeroing in on the calm of your breath, the flutter of your eyelashes, and the quiet that felt fleeting and eternal all at once. I didn’t know it then but in those moments I was fully aligned with myself—fully alive to the present. There was no rushing, no thinking about what comes next, no wishing I was somewhere else. It was just you and me and that oneness that made me finally understand what love is.
In a letter to his son about love, John Steinbeck said the main thing is not to hurry. In our slow mornings, we simmer turmeric and ginger in a pot on the stove and spread warm butter that’s the perfect shade of yellow over toasted sourdough. Time slows so we can hear the sound of the sun rising above the trees. In the afternoons, we listen to old records and dance in the living room until you blink slow and long, rubbing my hair between your fingers for comfort. When the sun falls behind the mountain and the air holds blue, we read books about trees, love, and how to take care of our hearts when we feel sad. I take you around the room to say goodnight to the things that are important to you—your Bob Dylan book, the rainbow painting that hangs over your crib, and your light-up seahorse. Time opens and closes around us and nothing is hurried. Nothing is rushed.
This is how I say I love you.
At night, while you sleep, I read to connect with worlds beyond this one, to find the right language to put to all my pain, all my joy. In a book about wonders, I learn that fireflies live up to two years underground and by the time we see them flickering like sparks in the darkness they only have one or two weeks left to live. The thought makes me sad but also reverent. I wrestle with telling you because I want you to experience the beauty of a fleeting thing without the inevitability of the loss gnawing at you from the start.
This is how I say I love you.
I talk to your grandfather on the phone, his big voice booming states away. He tells me about how he used to take black-and-white photos of a girl he loved when they were in the sixth grade. He said they looked like art, but he lit every single photo on fire after they broke up. He tells me about how he fell in love with a girl in Wisconsin once. They were building a life together, but one day he got scared and he disappeared without saying goodbye, leaving behind everything he owned.
“What were you scared of?” I ask.
“Love, I guess.”
He tells me he’s never loved anyone like he’s loved your grandmother, but even then, he never knew how to love her in the way she needed to be loved. He says he could never give her what she craved. When I ask him what that was, he says, for someone to listen, for someone to care.
For your grandfather, love equates to pain and grief and loss so he retreats into himself. He drives a wedge between himself and every good thing. He’s trained himself not to care. But I listen to him now and I hear the yearning in his voice. I care about him in all the ways he cannot allow himself to care about me or my mother or you. I hold the space for his regret and his pain and all that could’ve been and release the expectations I once held of what I thought love should look like. I meet my dad where he is instead of where I’ve wanted him to be. Because this is where the healing is, for him and for me and for you. In the letting go, the release, the opening of our hands for one another.
This is how I say I love you.
I close the door, sometimes for three hours a time. I need this space, this time, this quiet to get words onto the page. To write these letters to you, but also to write for myself, to myself. I hear you playing in your room with your dad. Your laughter and your squeals of joy are comforting, but they also bring up a longing that has me questioning my entire identity as a writer. I wonder if these words are worth it. Are they worth missing these ever-fleeting moments with, and of you? Ten years from now, will I be proud of the work I’ve created? Will you? I don’t know the answer. And so I continue to write because I’m allowing my heart to love what it loves without the expectation of what will come of it.
This is how I say I love you.
I wipe down the counters a million times a day. My hands smell like oranges and cloves from the non-toxic cleaner that I make in a spray bottle. I peel kiwis and mangos and slice them into wedges for your tiny hands to hold. Then, I wipe the counters. I make banana bread from your abandoned bananas because I like the way it makes the house smell. Then, I wipe the counters. I blend dried apricots, flax seeds, chia seeds, and hemp hearts into your oatmeal and count the milligrams of iron in every bowl. Then, I wipe the counters. I eat peaches over the sink, and still, I wipe the counters.
This is how I say I love you.
I make a list of everything I want to do with you this winter in a spiral notebook. We’re going to make holiday cards for your great-grandparents and decorate sugar cookies to give away. We’re going to wear ugly Christmas pajamas, make homemade ornaments, and wrap presents with recycled grocery bags. I’m going to take you to see the lights at the Arboretum and I’m going to teach you about Christmas traditions from around the world—Ligligan Parul in the Philippines, La Ribote in Martinique, 13 Yule Lads in Iceland. We’re creating our own traditions like donating things we no longer need and taking old blankets and towels to the animal shelter because Christmas [life] is not about what you get, but what you give.
This is how I say I love you.
We take a walk by the river. The trees we once named are now naked, their branches cracking against the wind. It’s thirty-three degrees and the grass is white with frost. My hands are burning with the cold because I forgot my gloves. You’re wearing two pairs of pants, a hat that covers your ears, and a jacket that makes your arms stick out like the twig arms of a snowman. You’re teetering around the playground in your winter layers, unbalanced and slightly annoyed, but you are warm and you are loved.
This is how I say I love you.
In the morning when you and the sun are still sleeping, I meditate. I sit on the floor or the big green chair next to the table stacked with the books I’m currently reading and close my eyes. I breathe for what feels like the first time since the morning before when I was sitting in this exact spot doing this same thing. This is a big part of what meditation is for me—a time to breathe, to become one with my breath, to notice its role in my vitality. My hands rest on my thighs, palms up, open to receiving whatever the universe has left to give.
When I close my eyes I can see the ocean behind my eyelids. Waves of varying shades of blue, the breath flowing in and out of me like the tide. Sometimes, the to-do list makes itself known. I do not try to stop myself from thinking because what I’ve found is that what you resist persists. Instead, I acknowledge the pull of the thought, and then I name it, open my hands, and let it go. When I open my eyes, the sea is gone, but the blue mountains are still blue, and now also pink from the sun that has risen. I steep tea—cinnamon, ginger, cloves, black pepper, cardamom, and hawthorn petals—and wait for you to wake.
Loving you is taking care of you, but it’s taking care of me, too.
This is how I say I love you.
How do you say I love you?
Let me know in one sentence (or more!). I want to hear any and all of it.