Letters to Lila: Change

Dear Lila,

I don't like change. Ever. Even when it's good change. Because change means there's some modicum of unknown variables, and I like to deal in neither the unknown nor variables. I like to know what's going on. You, at the precocious age of 15 months, already have this quality. You want to know everything, and you don't like when things change. For example, in your little mind, doors are to be closed. All the time. You go in one, you close it. Simple, right? So when we leave a door open, to a bedroom or bathroom, you and your lifetime of determination make your way over to said door with lightning speed to close it. Doors close. Period.

But sometimes, baby bird, doors open. And we have to embrace change. Your mom had a door open recently. I was offered a job at Salem College. You know it well, having been there many, many times already in your short little life. You cut your first tooth there, in August while mommy was there to welcome new students moving in. You have done two Race for the Cures that start and end on that campus. And when mommy had the opportunity to go back to this place called home, she took it.

Change is good. But it's terrifying. Of my old job, I pretty much knew what to expect. This new job will be different. It will be very similar to the job mommy had right when she graduated from this great place, but this time she's a little more grown up. She has some knowledge of the world, and a family. She lives in a different city. There are things that have changed, and things that have stayed the same. This is a change that will be good for all of us. But that doesn't mean I like it.

It's okay to be afraid of change. But don't ever let fear hold you back. I'm a grown up and I'm still afraid of it. But if I let it hold me back, I would have never gone to Salem College and been the lady I am today. I would have never married your daddy, and moved to Germany and had my whole life changed for the better. I wouldn't have become a mom, I wouldn't have done most of the things in my life that I got to choose. Most people think your mom is fearless. And that's okay that they think that. Currently, you are fearless about some things and terrified about others. There's nothing wrong with that. It makes you smart and cautious, and wild and carefree.  And that is a good way to be, baby girl. All at the same time.

Change is inevitable. You don't have to embrace it right away, but you don't have to let it hold you back. Sometimes, doors are open for a reason.

Love,
Mom

Letters to Lila: Growing up

Dear Lila,

It's a terrifying thing, as a parent, to watch your babies grow up. They're supposed to of course; they're babies. It's a natural fact. They're born, they get big. But the world is a scary, mean, unfair place. And I don't want you to ever know that. Then again, it's a beautiful, exciting, adventurous place, and I want you to know all about that. I wouldn't be who I am if I didn't know the ugly, mean parts of the world. So all I can do is hope you have more good than bad, more happy than sad, more beautiful adventures than ugly days. And sometimes, Faith Hill can say it better than I can...


"Fireflies"

Before you met me I was a fairy princess


I caught frogs and called them prince

And made myself a queen.

Before you knew me i traveled 'round the world

I slept in castles and fell in love

Because I was taught to dream.

I found mayonnaise bottles and poked holes on top

To capture tinkerbell

They were just fireflies to the untrained eye

But I could always tell



[chorus]

I believe in fairytales and dreamers dreams like bed sheet sails

And I believe in peter pan and miracles

And anything I can to get by

And fireflies


Before I grew up I saw you on a cloud.

I could bless myself in your name and pat you on your wings.

Before I grew up I heard you whisper so loud

"life is hard, and so is love, child, believe in all these things".

I found mayonnaise bottles and poked holes on top

To capture tinkerbell

And they were just fireflies to the untrained eye

But I could always tell

[chorus]

Before you met me I was a fairy princess

I caught frogs and called them prince

And made myself a queen.

Before you knew me i traveled 'round the world

And I slept in castles and fell in love

Because I was taught to dream...


I hope that you dream, and fall in love, and have a whole host of fairy tales in your life before you grow up and the world tells you not to dream, not to believe, not to pretend. She's right baby girl, life is hard and so is love, so believe in all these things. Stay young as long as you can. Be a princess. Capture fireflies. Sing and dance and be silly. Because one day, you'll be grown up and can't do those things anymore. But you can always dream.

Letter to Lila: Beauty

Dear Lila,

You are no doubt a beautiful child. You have your daddy's eyes and this wildly adorable curly hair, sweet little cheeks and an irresistable grin. People tell me every single day that you're beautiful. And they're right. But you're likely to hear it from me more often than anyone else, because that's what moms do. We lift you up, we praise and compliment you. I'll tell you you're beautiful when you feel least like it, when you feel ugly or not good enough or plain or unremarkable. That's when you need it the most. I'll tell you on your first day of kindergarten, your first day of high school, your wedding day.

But you need to know that beauty is not, and will never be, the most important thing about you. You are meant to be so much more. A pretty face means nothing if the girl behind it doesn't have a beautiful heart. The world is going to try to tell how to look, what to wear, who to idolize. But "the world" isn't there at the end of the day when you need a hug. Your friends and your family are. They are the ones who know you for you, the real you, the you that you are despite the world's best efforts to make you like everyone else. Don't get so caught up in what you look like that you forget to be nice to people. Do things for others. Make people smile. Read until your head feels like it might burst with characters, places, events.

One day you might wear braces, or glasses. You might have freckles. That wild hair may be unruly. But you will still be beautiful. Because none of that has anything to do with the person you are, the person you will become. Always be kind. Remember that your mother made you feel beautiful when you felt as though you weren't, and pass that along to a friend that isn't feeling so beautiful. Realize that your worth is not tied up in the package that the world sees, but in the person you will spend every day creating. Make those days count. Be healthy, be happy, be beautiful...all by your own standards.

Letters to Lila: Birthdays

Lila,

You are a whole year old today. To say that, it makes it seem like it has been much longer. It's only 365 days. That's not very long, in comparison. Your dad spent nearly three times that long deployed. I was pregnant for nearly twice that, including both of you. But how much we have learned about ourselves, and about you, in those short 365 days.

You are so very independent. You want to do everything on your own, with as little help from us as possible. We try to oblige that, when safety allows.

You love your sleep. This we appreciate probably the most. You like to go to bed when you're tired, not overtired. If we pay attention and put you down then, you like to sleep 12+ hours. On the weekends, you've been known to sleep 14. I suspect you get this from me.

You do not like to be restrained (see above, "independence"). You don't like to sit in the high chair a minute longer than necessary to eat (which means sometimes you share your food with the dogs to speed it up); you don't really care for the stroller and you only like to be held when you initiate it.

You. Love. To. EAT. Seriously. Fruits, vegetables, cereal, bars, biscuits...you love it all! You aren't a huge meat fan yet but you'll grow into that. I promise.

You love your momma. I'm not saying that to pride myself; you alone have chosen to prefer me (for now) over everyone else in our house. I don't know how long it will last, but I will take it as long as I can get it.

For kids, birthdays are about cake and presents, balloons and toys, and mostly feeling special. For moms, it's a day to reflect on the wondrous day in which they brought life into the world. I remember every detail about your birthday. I remember the anticipation, the pain, the fear, the impatience, the fear, the confusion, the fear, the love, and the relief. 365 days ago, I saw your face for the first time. I heard you cry, held you in my arms and promised to always take care of you. And in those 365 days, I promise I have tried my very best to love, protect and teach you. That's all moms can do. There will come a time when I can't protect you...from sadness, from heartache, from pain. But every day until then, I will do my very best. There will come a time when I can't teach you everything you need to know, but I will do my very best to find a way to help you learn what you need to learn. But there will never be a day that I won't know how to love you. Sometimes, that means telling you no because it's best for you. It means giving you rules and boundaries, because you need them. And that may mean you think I'm the meanest mom there is. And that's okay, because I won't love you any less for it.

In 365 days, you'll be a completely different person than you are today. I look forward to each and every day between the first 365 and the second. I am so grateful to be your mother, to have a daughter, my little Lila Bean. Happy birthday my girl, mommy loves you!

Letters to Lila: Marriage

Dear Lila,

Your father and I have a great marriage. It's not perfect; some days we want to claw each other's eyes out. Some days we go to bed without speaking. And some days, we're perfectly content being alone (he works nights). But at the end of the day, we love each other. The reason we fight sometimes is because we love each other. We want the best for you and your brother, and sometimes have to hash that out. Sometimes we are in bad moods for no reason.

But we always say "I'm sorry". We always say "I love you". There are some days when we see a glimpse of the "us" we were in 2004, before deployments, before Germany, before children and before we had to truly grow up. We get to be silly and laugh, make jokes, pick on each other and give kisses (even in front of you). We remember why we work so hard to make our marriage work; it's because we love each other through the fights, the bad days, the disagreements and the dirty laundry.

Something people don't tell you about marriage, Lila, is that it's work. It's hard. You have to work at your marriage every single day and don't ever let anyone tell you any differently. You'll go through what they call a honeymoon phase, where you want to kiss and be lovey and snuggly and you overlook every flaw, every possible disagreement because no one, anywhere has ever been as happy as you two are right then. No one has ever loved anyone the way you love each other. But then the newness wears off, and real life sets in, and the work starts. So here's some advice from your mom, an old married lady who hopes to be married to your dad for the rest of your life.

*Marry a man who treats you like a princess. This doesn't mean he showers you with gifts and "things" but that he makes you feel important and treats you like a precious gem. Because you are. That's not narcissistic, you are a human being and one-of-a-kind and he needs to recognize that.

*Marry a man who isn't threatened when you have to be the knight in shining armor. The best marriages are reciprocal; sometimes he may run out of gas and need you to rescue him. It doesn't make him less of a man, it means you're a team.

*Marry a man who isn't afraid to hurt your feelings, or get his hurt in return. Honesty is one of the most attributes in anyone you spend your time with, but especially one you intend to spend your whole life with. And that means sometimes telling each other "You're being a jerk" because sometimes, you're being a jerk. And you need to hear it.

*Marry a man that makes you laugh. You're going to spend hours together, at the dinner table, on airplanes, in cars and in waiting rooms. That time is better spent in humor than in silence.

*Then again, there's something to be said for silence. Marry someone you're content to sit in silence with. You don't always have to talk. Be comfortable with each other, and that will speak for itself.

*Don't be afraid to let him see you sick, without makeup and in sweatpants. Marilyn Monroe once said, "If you can't handle me at my worst, you sure don't deserve me at my best." If your beauty, in his eyes, lies in your curled hair and manicured nails, he doesn't deserve you.

*Never change who you are for a man. You'll hate yourself for it. You're perfect the way you are, and someone one day will love you for all the things that you are, not all the things you're not.

*Never give up your friends for a man. If he asks you to, he's insecure. If you do it on your own, you'll regret it. Friends are there to pick us up when the rest of the world lets us down and I assure you, he's going to let you down. We're human.

*Don't be afraid to go to bed mad. Sometimes, you just need to sleep on it to then wake up and realize you were wrong. And sometimes, you have to be the bigger person and say "I'm sorry" first, even if you're not the only one at fault. Pride goeth before the fall, and no amount of pride is worth losing your soulmate.

*Don't be afraid to hold hands or kiss him in public. But have some decency about it. If you love someone, you show them. You shout it from the rooftops. But you're a lady, and what ever you do in public will always get back to your mother.

*Absolutely, positively believe in soul mates. There is someone out there that is absolutely meant for you. You may find him in the first boy you date. You may find him at 13, and not know it until 22. And even then, you may not want to believe it for a few months. You may find him at 40. Or you may find out that he is a she. I don't care who you marry, as long as you feel in your soul that it's who you're supposed to be with. I keep saying "marry a man" but that's because I did. You may find out that your soulmate is a woman. As your mother I will always want the best for you, and the best is the person that treats you like the precious soul that you are.

I wish I could tell you that life was easy, that you'd never be sad and that you'll never have your heart broken. But I'm here to be your mom and tell you the truth. The truth is, you're going to break hearts and have yours broken, and you're going to feel like nothing will ever be right again. It's been said that someone will come along one day and make you understand why it never worked out with anyone else. There's about a billion country songs about thinking you're going to marry someone and finding out later why God had other plans. Don't give up on love because you strike out. Don't be afraid to give your heart to someone. Your dad can drive me nuts with a bag of tortilla chips and he threatens bodily harm every time he finds a bobby pin in his chair; but I'd go to hell and back for him and he's already been there for me. Marriage is hard, but it's worth every bit of it.

Letter to Lila: Love

Dear Lila,

People give me a hard time about you. You're a few days shy of ten months old, and though you're ready (in your own mind) to conquer the world, you are still but an infant. You can't quite walk, you can't quite talk, and you have a lot to learn about personal space.

Lila, people give me a hard time because when you cry, I pick you up. Now, not every time. I can tell when you're just being sassy because you lay your head down on your hands on the floor, and then look up to see if I'm paying attention. You cry when I leave the room, when you can see me but I'm not holding you. "She's a momma's girl", they say; "you've spoiled that baby", they admonish. This "they" includes friends and family, even your own father.

I say to that, they can kiss it, Lila. There will come a time in the not-so-distant future when you will have no time to be held because you're too busy doing other things. You will one day make the switch from my baby to a daddy's girl, and wrap him around your little finger. You'll grow too big for my arms to hold (without your legs dangling to my ankles) and then I won't get to pick you up anymore.

But you know what? In your almost-ten-months, I've never once put you to bed and worried, "Did I hug her enough today? Did she get enough kisses? Does she know how much I love her?" Not one time have I worried that you didn't get enough affection from me that day. In our family, we show our love with affection. We hug, we snuggle, we give kisses and we hold each other in our laps. We sit two-to-a-seat when there is room to have our own. We say it. We say "I love you", "I'm proud of you", "You are special". Your dad loves in the same way, but he also values independence. He wants you to be tough and strong and to stand on your own. And that's a great balance in our house, because without him, I'd never want you guys to do anything on your own. This world is a big scary place and in time, you'll learn for yourself that life can be full of sadness, disappointment and hate. But for right now, all you know is love. When I lay you down in your bed each night, after our hugs and kisses, I give you your bink, your pink pup-pup and I always whisper, "You're safe". You don't know what that means yet. But it's my way of saying that you are in a warm, safe place with a full belly, surrounded by love, and you can sleep peacefully. It may not reassure your heart, but it does mine.

So I will keep holding you when I don't have to. I will give you as many kisses as your face will hold. I will hug and snuggle you for as many hours as you are awake, but respect your need to be in bed before 7 (thanks for that, by the way). I will tell you "I love you" 100 times plus one every day. I did the same thing with your brother, and in my opinion he's grown up to be a very loving, affectionate, independent and secure little boy. So let them say you're spoiled, because you may be able to spoil a child with money and with "things", but you can never spoil a child with love. A baby can never, ever be loved too much, despite a mother's best efforts to do so.

Letter to Lila

I write Hayden a letter every year on his birthday. I haven't decided if I'm doing the same for Lila, or something different, but this was on my heart the other night so I wrote her a letter.

*************************************************************************************
Dear Lila,

Inevitably, there will come a day when someone asks you why you're a Redskins fan. You'll give them the same answer I have for 30 years, "I was born into it". In this family, you get some choices, but one of them is not whether to be a Redskins fan. They lose, they win, they find a way to lose despite winning...it's a heartbreaking thing, to be a Skins fan. But we do it anyway.

Someday, someone is going to ask you why you're a Phillies fan. This answer is a little different. You see, I was born a Braves fan. Then in the 90s, MLB kept going on strike and I got fed up with the institution of professional baseball. And for a really long time, that's where the story ended.

Fast forward to the 2000s, when your mom is a freshman in college. I had the fortune to meet three of the greatest people I'll ever know while visiting the city of brotherly love for the very first time. This friendship quickly developed over a mutual love of accents and amazing storytelling. On one visit, my friend Megan decided I needed some true Philly gear, and got me a Ryan Howard Phillies shirt. Whenever I wore it at home, people always had something to say, one way or the other. In college, you meet people from lots of different places, so sometimes they thought they'd found a fellow Philadelphian; other times, they wanted to talk a little trash. Either way, I quickly learned that I'd have to pay attention to baseball again, or just not wear the shirt. And it was a cute shirt. And when you look good in red, you own it.

As luck should have it, I was wearing that shirt in 2006 in Germany, when someone approached me and asked if I was from Philly. She instantly knew that was not the case when she heard me talk, but that very same shirt led me to meet two more of the greatest people I'd ever met. Jaime introduced herself, and we found we had a lot in common- we had dogs, not kids; we loved to travel; we had the best intentions to scrapbook said travel, but were always at least a year behind. Jaime's husband, Dave, was your dad's commander and would be his commander in Afghanistan in 2007.

Jaime and I quickly formed a friendship based on love of food, wine, travel and all-things-northern-or-southern. We formed a team of leadership in our family readiness group (FRG) to help get the families of Anvil troop through a long, grueling deployment that would last 15 months for some. But that deployment has never ended for Jaime, because Dave was killed in action on 12 November 2007.

Lila, there aren't really words to describe the days and months that followed 12 November 2007, but to say a big piece of my heart was broken and never really got fixed is an understatement. You may only get one or two chances your whole life to see what someone is truly made of, and I saw that in the days and weeks that followed, and still see it today. Someone I knew as a friend turned out to be one of the strongest people I've ever met, with absolutely unmatched grace and courage. Any one of us would have understood if Jaime just fell to pieces and never really came back from it; Lila, we would have. Instead, she keeps his memory alive by living a life that would make him proud; by raising money and advocating for other widows and Gold Star families; and by being a great friend.

When Jaime found out I was having you, a baby girl, she sent you your very own Phillies onesies. As it turns out, you look good in pink AND in red. So you see Lila, I wasn't born into being a Phillies fan; you were. Because some of the greatest people we know are Phillies fans, and because that Ryan Howard Phillies shirt has changed my whole life. I don't know that it's the reason I met Jaime, and we became friends, but I know that it's the most clear memory of HOW I met Jaime.

This year, my friend Megan who gave me the shirt had a baby boy named Ben. You'll meet him soon I hope, and when you're older you'll think he talks a little funny and he'll think you're weird because you call it "the beach" and not "the shore". But I hope you're friends a lifetime.

At no point in your life will anyone ever question your decision to be a Carolina Tarheels fan. If they do, they're not the kind of friend you'll want to keep.