Certain things mark time: music we love, a scent in the air, a certain haircut. Children seem to move even faster than all that. With H. right now I want to remember that she sings every third word or so of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” The other day she said “ballerina” and I couldn’t believe such a big word came out of my, well, big girl. Sometimes, I marvel at the sheer length of her—how much she has grown! I try hard to imprint her little voice as it wraps around her name when she announces her actions, “H. down!” or “H. strong!” as she picks up something half her size. She treats Ruby like a sister, both with love and a fiery protection of what is hers. These days, her Elmo comes absolutely everywhere with us. And when I leave her room for a nap, she waits until I am just at the door and then shouts “Hugs!,” my cue to come back and snuggle her—a routine she created. She puts her palms on my cheeks and almost giggles her sleepy “Mama” into my ear. My heart does its best to soak up the totality of all this, all of her.
These are a few of our sign posts for fall 2015, on the eve of H. turning two. For Lorenzo, the sign posts have to be different. There are the ones firmly lodged in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter of 2012—the wet leaves covering Santiago’s wide sidewalks, all the laps Ruby and I did around the neighborhood, the podcasts in my ears as I tried to remember the wide world beyond us. It was summer too, that June, when we were home in California. So there is the reflective shimmer of my mom’s pool as I sat, raw, on the back deck, my milk painfully dammed behind ice packs. And all that undeniable sunshine… Just the month before, I’d swum in that pool with Lorenzo. On my backstroke, I looked up at the redwoods piercing the sky and imagined our future. So that memory is also there in the shimmer.
As time has gone on, there are our rituals: the heart sparkler we light once it’s dark on June 2, the memory book I add to year-round, the green-ribboned box I open in order to see him. Also, my posts, essays, and articles—where I have told different aspects of his story. I am so grateful to all of you still reading.
As H. says new words, I write them. Here are three new pieces about Lorenzo:
The Washington Post Magazine has a moving section called “MINE,” highlighting a small thing with great meaning. For me, that is the first heart I found, ushering in the #chainlinkheartproject. Ryan and I were in Peru to honor Lorenzo’s September due date. So other sign posts are those onshore winds and the pulse of the rocks pummeling against my calves as they rolled back into the sea. I almost didn’t take the heart with me; it was a time when possessions mattered little. But thankfully I picked it up, where it tucked so easily against my palm. Because Lorenzo’s possessions, the grand total of them so few, matter a great deal. That rock has now journeyed from the shores of South America and all the places and times it tumbled through before, to the offices of one of our country’s most storied newspapers, where it was photographed. Lorenzo has reached so far.
For Modern Loss, I write the status updates I never did, amidst all these words I have. Online is a complicated space. I have relied on it immensely, here and in the outlets that have valued Lorenzo’s story. But I never could put loss on Facebook and I’ve never been back. This piece explains why.
Even I am surprised that three and a half years later, I still have so much to say. I explore that for Literary Mama‘s After Page One series, devoted to the duality of being a mother and a writer and how one influences the other. I have stopped wondering if I will ever stop writing about him. Nobody stops loving their children and writing is how I show that love to someone who isn’t here to be sung to or snuggled. But he, too, grows, if only inside my mind. The other day I saw him as the three-year-old boy he would be in a different time with a different heart. He’s blonde like his dad was at that age—and running.