dear jackson: the work on the ground

Dear Jack,I have begun so many letters to you. Each one drifts away from me in the busyness of joy, this business you set me about, to be your mother, to become your mother. Day in and day out, you set me back on the ground, back at the beginning. You are learning to sit on your own, and you always turn back to me, grin widening to let me in on the secret - that all the work begins here on the ground. You turn back to your toys and you press the button one more time, the music comes back on, you clap your hands, we repeat.All the work begins here on the ground.This was the time, last year, of my first letter to you, named as you are, Jacks, Jackson, Jack. More often we call you buddy. Most often we call out to you with our laughter, and you call us with yours.Last year I told you that you might need a little help breathing and eating. That was true, but last year it was so new and we pricked our fingers trying to hold all the hard words at once, searching the damp and crinkly pages of the ultrasound for answers. It was rushed and we were trying to be unafraid for you. I want to reach back to me then, I want to reach back with you and your laughter, your smile that is wide enough for past and future, for a world good and difficult. I want to reach back through the folds and wrinkles of time to tell her that it is you, learning to sit on your own, who can make us unafraid. That it will be you teaching, not me.This time last year I wrote to you, afraid as I was that we wouldn't begin on the right foot with the right language with the right protections around you. This time last year I thought my skin and muscles and bones weren't enough to keep you safe in the world where most people have never examined a stoma in a neck, where most people don't know how a barium swallow study is performed, where to have only one eye or only one ear is to beg a question - "So someday, will he look normal?" This time last year I thought I was to stand in the gap, stretched far and wide like the thin coils of wire that hold up bridges. I would be the wire and the bridge, I would be the guard and the keeper, I would be safety, salt and light.I imagine someone might think I'm telling you too much about myself, the ways I thought, the things I feared. But transformation's not a work I want to hide from you, not anywhere, and I'm in a chrysalis too, little one, and you should know how much of me God keeps changing.I wrote you a letter May 9 last year, afraid to fail in giving you exactly whatever was right to give you. I was up high above the ground, whispering over and over, making rope and a bridge out of Jesus's words, take heart, it is I, do not be afraid. But here you are, calling me to the ground. All the work begins here on the ground, here where we take off our shoes. I wanted to build you a bridge to keep you from what I feared was a dangerous world, a dangerous life.Instead you have brought me to the ground of your life, you have set me to work unraveling the rope I wove so tightly, fear coiled inside it. You have set me here, among your favorite toys - Sophie the giraffe and the multicolored hedgehog, your zebra blanket, the orchestra turtle - and here I see how you haven't needed me to build you a bridge or carry you away, you've just wanted me here sitting with you, clapping and singing and making animal sounds, doing it all on repeat.It is impossible to write, Jack, what you've taught me, but the closest I can come is to tell you that I am here on the holy ground of your life unraveling a bridge I didn't need to build, neck deep in love with the self you're becoming. You lift up your arms to meet mine and we laugh. We reach back to a year ago, we pull that woman down to the ground with us, to pull her into the holy, into the good. You reach around for another toy to shake. You laugh again.All the work begins on the ground, buddy.Love,mom