1 Mother 2 Another

Dear Cora:


Every morning provided the weather holds, you scooter to school.
About a block and a half into it, you arrive at your friend
Lily’s house, and invariably you pause there, lingering in
the hope that she’ll come walking out the door at that moment
and you two can continue on to school together.


When I catch up with you, you’ll always say that your leg is
“tired and needs to rest”. One day I teasingly pointed
out that your leg always seems to get tired at the same spot on our
journey; you shrugged and said matter-of-factly, “My leg
always wants to rest with my friends.”


Well, I don’t know about your leg, kiddo, but I know for
certain that your heart rests with your friends. You spent the past
few years essentially “borrowing” friends from your
older sister, but this year you’ve truly come into your own
and have spent kindergarten developing your own sweet little gang.
You are always begging me for a play date with Lily, or Maggie, or
Logan or Rawan – always wanting to spend more time with your
friends. And it’s not that you’re not comfortable in
your own skin: you can easily entertain yourself in your room for
hours at a time. No, you simply love your friends. You have an easy
confidence with them that, frankly, I envy: I can’t imagine
being that comfortable with myself and open with so many others at
your age.

This has been a big year for you, kiddo,
starting kindergarten and all. And I have to hand it to you:
you’ve hit the ground running and haven’t looked back.
You seem to truly love school – the teachers, the friends,
the learning, the whole thing. You come home filled with excitement
and awe about the life cycle of a plant, or full of trivia about
our home state. During music class I can picture you singing
lustily; indeed, the music teacher told me once that she allowed
you all to act out a song about Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and
you nearly took over the whole class with your sweeping portrayal
of multiple characters. In the same song.


Ballet is still high on your list of Awesome Things To Do, and for
that I’m profoundly grateful. For the talent show this year
you chose to do an improvisational dance, and I was in awe of your
unselfconsciousness as you got up in front of all your friends and
did your thing. When you dance, you look so supremely confident
– not snotty or stuck up about it, simply completely at home
with what you’re doing, inhabiting the dance and your
performance with ease and comfort. You look as if it never occurred
to you that someone might not want to watch you dance, and thus it
never even occurs to us to look away. I don’t know where
you’ll go with dance, kiddo, but I hope it always brings you
such joy and freedom.


Being inside school seven hours a day hasn’t dampened your
love for the outdoors at all; if anything, your green thumb has
blossomed into an entire green limb! Your favorite vacations are
our weekends at the nearby cabin; you have yet to meet a tree you
didn’t want to climb; and you will happily putter in our side
or back garden for hours at a time. This spring as we cleaned up
our yard, you fell in love with a few plants at our local nursery.
You’ve got a lovely little clematis vine that you begged us
to bring home, and you won’t let anyone take care of it
except you. Some evenings when we eat dinner outside, you’ll
happily head to the herb garden and put together a fresh
“salad” for me – peppermint and spearmint leaves
mixed with, say, sage and basil. I’ll say this for you
– your creations are original and I happily swallow them for
you.


I am head over heels in love with you, Cora. You’ve been
having a bit of a rough patch recently, not wanting to (for
example) do homework when you’re told and thus wasting the
next three hours (you’re quite stubborn!) sulking, stewing,
crying, raging, cooling down, begging, and starting over again.
I’m trying hard to hang in there and simply love you through
this, baby, though I know my responses to you are not always
grace-filled. And in these situations I’m glad that
we’ve both got a savior whose grace covers an actual
multitude of sins!


This year has been amazing, my love. I’ve missed you so much
while you’re at school, and miss our Cora and Mommy days of
yore. But I see how you’re blooming, growing more independent
and confident, and I know this is where you’re meant to be.
I’m grateful you still want to hang out with me out of
school, baking or making herbal remedies or hand soap or gardening
or . . . the list is endless and you’re always up for
something. Hanging out at Starbucks on a chilly day with a book and
a good cup of cocoa; or spending a lazy afternoon reading outside
on pillows piled high on a Mommy Day; or even checking you out of
school for a bit so we can go have a picnic for lunch, just the two
of us: these are all times I treasure and am so vividly aware will
end sooner than I want.


You, my little baby, are six years old. I really can’t
believe it, and it seems like just a couple years ago I met you in
the delivery room for the first time. At the same time, you have
such a hold on my heart that I can’t imagine life without
you. I can’t wait to see what the next year holds, Cora, and
look forward to exploring it with you.


Love,


Mommy