Dear Hildegaard

Fledgelings and flowers

Dear Hildegaard,

There are two things worth noting for future generations who will undoubtedly study you, whether for some scientific invention, for writing the next great American novel, or for living the kind of beautiful, ordinary life that others want to imitate. To start, you held your first snake this week: a baby garter I found slithering past our lettuce bed. You didn’t hesitate when I handed him to you. You pinched his hide with your baby fingers and looked into his kind eyes (round pupils are what you want to see) and then we set him free and watched him belly away through the grass together. You bid him farewell with a wave and bye-bye. You are incredibly brave. 

The other thing to note is that you sleep with books. When babies are very little, they aren’t allowed to sleep with anything. In fact, parents are encouraged to swaddle their infants - binding their arms to their sides and placing them to sleep on their backs all night. This is because of something called SIDS, which I’ll tell you about later because it makes me too sad to talk about. I remember opening up your swaddle in the mornings when you were first born, and your arms would immediately dart out into a big, needed stretch. As you got older and could roll back and forth, you were allowed to sleep on your belly. Then, when you passed the age one, I let you take stuffed animals and a light blanket to bed. I also let you take a book or two. Now, you can’t sleep without them. Even in the dark, at night, Dad and I watch you flip through Madeline or Pajama Time before falling asleep. I wonder what will happen when you learn how to read. I had better get you your own bookshelf and flashlight.

Other than that, we’ve had a lazy summer, picking sweet peas and flowers from the garden, walking down the street with your plastic yellow bus that you like to fill with sticks and dandelions and rocks, and splashing around with the garden hose in the humid, midwestern heat. But our perfect laziness got interrupted last week when your dad got into a bicycle accident. He was just riding home from work, and within hours, he was in the hospital with internal bleeding. You saw him faint on our hardwood floor and sobbed and sobbed at his side while I frantically called different numbers. I wish I could say that I am calm under pressure, but by now you know the truth.

When the babysitter arrived and I rushed past you with dad, to get him to the ER, she said that you put your head in your hands for about thirty seconds and sighed, shoulders slumped. You recovered quickly, and all your babysitters said you did great, which makes me incredibly proud, but, every night when I came home from the hospital, you held onto me tightly and stroked my face, speaking your dad’s name like a question: Daddy? Dad’n? Dada? You feel everything deeply. This will be one of your greatest gifts to the world. It will also be one of the greatest challenges of your life. Ask me how I know. 

They transferred your dad to a hospital farther away that night, and I drove back home to be with you. No one called me until 2 a.m., when a nurse rang my phone. I honestly didn’t know what was waiting on the other end of that phone call. And I won’t ever forget that feeling. “God, please preserve his life. Let us keep him,” I whispered, before saying a shaky “Hello?”

And God did preserve your dad’s life. But what’s hard about following Jesus and reading the Bible is that we see how often God’s children suffer. How being loved by God doesn’t mean we won’t experience pain, loss, or dizzying grief in this life. I want to give you the formula for avoiding pain, or teach you a specific prayer or a way to live that ensures you a trial-free existence. But I can’t. I just know this: that God can tell you the exact number of hairs on your head. And He sees every lily in the field and every bird that falls from its mother’s nest. 

And He loves you even more than fledgelings or flowers. So do I.