Today we celebrate the beginning of your 8th month here on this earth, sweet Vivi girl. I marvel at the “big” girl sitting in the high chair at the end of our table, opening your mouth like a baby bird as the spoon nears your lips. You’re learning to clap your hands now, often with a big smile spread across your face. What joy! I see life through a new lens now. I watch your big eyes soak in the world that is before you and the delight you find in exploring it. Your little pincher hands open and close, open and close constantly as you feel the objects around you.
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| Your beautiful smile, on the eve of your 8 month birthday! |
And my favorite of all: sometimes you flash a big smile at me and look at me as if you’re reading my soul. You fix your eyes on mine and it feels just like we’ve exchanged silent words of love. Do all babies do this? We often hear that you’re such a serious baby, such an observer of the world. Whatever it is, those intense babies stares full of love is one of the best experiences in the world.
Your eighth month on earth coincides with the Winter Solstice, the shortest, darkest day of the year for us. It notes the beginning of what was once coined “the famine months” for many. The risk of starvation and death was often highest between January and April, when the ground was cold and the crops had long been harvested. Communities would gather together for one final celebration before the dark months began, celebrating with fresh meat from the recently slaughtered cattle, intentionally killed so they wouldn’t have to be fed throughout the deep winter.
As we celebrate this day with you and this Christmas holiday (and your mama’s 29th birthday!), there are families, entire communities across the country beginning their own famine months.
Your eighth month on earth coincides with the Winter Solstice, the shortest, darkest day of the year for us. It notes the beginning of what was once coined “the famine months” for many. The risk of starvation and death was often highest between January and April, when the ground was cold and the crops had long been harvested. Communities would gather together for one final celebration before the dark months began, celebrating with fresh meat from the recently slaughtered cattle, intentionally killed so they wouldn’t have to be fed throughout the deep winter.
As we celebrate this day with you and this Christmas holiday (and your mama’s 29th birthday!), there are families, entire communities across the country beginning their own famine months.
One week ago, a twenty year old man-hardly a man himself, really-took the lives of twenty-seven people before taking his own. Twenty-six people went to school on a Friday, expecting to spend the weekends attending holiday parties and partaking in their annual traditions. Instead, they were met by their untimely and tragic deaths.
The winter solstice: the darkest day. A harbinger for the grief, for the famine to come.
We can’t make sense of it. As a nation we ask why. What could possibly motivate a young man to take the lives of innocent people, most of whom were sweet children with their whole lives ahead of them? How someone could shoot through a glass door, walk into two classrooms of first-graders and heartlessly take their lives is a question all of us have. We will likely never know his reasons.
We can’t make sense of it. As a nation we ask why. What could possibly motivate a young man to take the lives of innocent people, most of whom were sweet children with their whole lives ahead of them? How someone could shoot through a glass door, walk into two classrooms of first-graders and heartlessly take their lives is a question all of us have. We will likely never know his reasons.
The pro-guns and anti-guns crowds took less than a day before they began accusing each other of being the root of the problem. Is it mental illness? Poor parenting decisions? Reports indicate that his mother was a gun collector and often took her sons to the shooting range. Not enough gun access? Too much gun access?
It’s evil. Whatever it is, whatever the cause, it’s truly evil. Devastating. Heart wrenching. A search for the right words to describe the magnitude of this loss brings inadequate results. Like so many people around our nation, I grieve for those families of the tiny victims and for the loved ones of the women who tried to protect them.
It’s evil. Whatever it is, whatever the cause, it’s truly evil. Devastating. Heart wrenching. A search for the right words to describe the magnitude of this loss brings inadequate results. Like so many people around our nation, I grieve for those families of the tiny victims and for the loved ones of the women who tried to protect them.
Twenty smiling faces, six and seven year old little darlings, won’t celebrate this Christmas with their families this year. Wrapped presents placed under the Christmas trees will never be opened. Many, many milestones—losing teeth, learning to drive a car, first dates, first kisses, dances, graduations, baptisms, participating on sports teams, weddings, children of their own, adventures—all of those opportunities are gone. As I think ahead to those milestones that I look forward to watching you experience, I am reminded of the fragility of life and the unfortunate fact that we are never guaranteed another day of life. Never.
For the first time in your eight months of life, I questioned whether or not we should have even brought a life into this world. An event of this magnitude reminds us that parents can’t protect their children all the time, try as we might. But I remember the sacrifices that the Sandy Hook school staff made that day, some of those paying the price with their own lives, all for students that they felt fiercely protective of. It too is a reminder, only this time of a love and caring so deep that a person could sacrifice their own life for others.
I write this to you today because, in the event that you actually read these letters someday when you’re grown, you will understand how our experiences and observations of the world influenced how we raised you. And as we approach this Christmas weekend, I am thankful for the opportunity I have to celebrate it as a little family-your first Christmas. You are a little ray of light and I am delighted to be your mama in this journey. I promise to protect you however I can in the best way I know how. (Unless of course, you decide to do something crazy during high school or college and bring a punishment upon yourself, in which case you need to “handle ya bizness”, as Auntie SteVon might say.)Let us remember the Sandy Hook victims and their loved ones as final goodbyes are said and memorials held in the following days. Let us pray for the children and staff who were in school during the tragedy, that they may find peace and are surrounded by love as they begin to heal. Let us also remember the entire community, the surrounding areas, and the entire nation, for we are all different today than we were eight days ago.
Remembering them all:
Charlotte Bacon, 6 years old
Daniel Barden, 7 years old
Rachel Davino, 29 years old
Olivia Engel, 6 years old
Josephine Gay 7 years old
Ana M. Marquez-Greene 6 years old
Dylan Hockley 6 years old
Dawn Hochsprung 47 years old
Madeleine F. Hsu 6 years old
Catherine V. Hubbard, 6 years old
Chase Kowalski 7 years old
Jesse Lewis 6 years old
James Mattioli 6 years old
Grace McDonnell 7 years old
Anne Marie Murphy 53 years old
Emilie Parker, 5/12/06, female
Jack Pinto 6 years old
Noah Pozner 6 years old
Caroline Previdi 6 years old
Jessica Rekos 6 years old
Avielle Richman 6 years old
Lauren Rousseau 30 years old
Mary Sherlach 56 years old
Victoria Soto 27 years old
Benjamin Wheeler 6 years old
Allison N. Wyatt 6 years old
There is a movement sweeping through the nation in honor of the victims called 26 Acts of Kindness. The movement encourages us to do 26 acts for others (including strangers), honoring each victim as we do. I feel strongly that we should be part of this movement both in honor of them and in celebration of the fact that we are the recipients of a wonderful, sweet gift this year—you.
Merry Christmas, sweet Vivi. We love you!
Love,
Mama
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Some of the fun from your seventh month:
* Your first trip to Minnesota for Thanksgiving * Your first Thanksgiving!
* Trying baby food for the first time (Okay, your first time was on your seventh month birthday)
* You don’t like bananas, apples, or squash but you like pears and sweet potatoes
* You are really big, actually! You weighed in at 13 lbs 6 ozs at a sick visit this past month (You had an upper respiratory illness that was the DEVIL! Two weeks long, and what a little grumpalicious girl you were.)
* You learned how to clap
* Your big girl teeth are inching up! Bottom two, and they came in at the same time.
* You still fit into 3 month clothing, but I can tell you’re getting taller and you might start looking like you’re wearing highwaters.
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