Hello, Lia.
Yesterday marked your second birthday in quarantine. In the old days, we’d go out into the world, our oversized backpacks brimming with zest for all things wild and undiscovered. Normally, I’d say change is life-enchanting, but we both know a pandemic is anything but.
You had your fair share of tears in the past year, each the color of sadness. Some were shed for classrooms whose walls are now merely imagined. Some for people whose hands you can only touch via a screen. Some for trees you cannot hug. Some for homes and still moments – in airports or long bus rides; at sea or in the mountains; head up to the sky or looking down the earth.
We are living amid a monumental shift, Lia. I wish I can assure you that beautiful things can be looked forward to with certainty. But like time, touch and sight are but gifts lent to us. We exist in impermanence, and the only way to make sense of it all is to live now, Here, with intention and gratitude.
So, today I hope to create space for gratitude. Despite the small world we now move in, like light, we can still move in it at our own speed, without contraptions and hooks. In spite of how grim the following days, weeks, and years might become, I have your resilience, humor, and wisdom to see them through with. And though tomorrow hangs in great uncertainty, I am grateful that we have us Here, now – dreaming, loving, fighting for the future, and making the best of what we have together, as we always do. This moment, what you feel Here and now, is real and certain. Never forget that.
Grateful to be Here on your ninth year on Earth, witnessing you soldier on,
Mama
PS – Your birthday was celebrated at home with your friends, Lola, and Lolo. You said it’s your “best birthday ever”.
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