{the.wednesday.whistle}

dear Mikki and Katie…

i remember the day i brought you home from the hospital, Mikki. we entered our third floor Bangor apartment for the first time as parents, and i sat on the couch while i unbuckled your sleeping body from the safety of your car seat. it had snowed on the ride home in the car, uncommon for April even in Maine.  i laid you on my chest, and the feeling that came over me was a blanket of overwhelming  peace and comfort. rare  in motherhood, at least for me, are these instinctive and relaxed, conscious moments. that is probably why i remember them all.

what i did next left a vivid imprint on the inside of my heart and a lump in my throat…i turned on the television. CNN was on…i must have left it on the morning i left for work before i had gone into labor 3 days before. loud bombs and gun shots rose from the screen and wrapped the living room in a distant yet ripe fear. at that time, the war in Iraq was just beginning, and the reality that we had brought our baby girl into a violence saturated world was too much for my post pregnant, hormone overfilled, drama inclined anyway,  self. tears gurgled in the corner of my eyes, and i changed the channel to Trading Spaces on the HGTV network.

peace won’t always be at hand easily, girls. even in our souls and within our individual lives, that innate need is rarely indulged or sustained. as the world absorbs you and holds you as its own, as young people but more importantly as adults, promote, ignite, and just radiate from your very existence, a genuine sense of peace…for others, and for yourselves.

all my love darlings,

p.s: “maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. a happiness weapon. a beauty bomb. and every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. it would explode high in the air – explode softly – and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. floating down to earth – boxes of Crayolas. and we wouldn’t go cheap, either – not little boxes of eight. boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. with silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. and people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination. {robert.fulghum}