September 24, 2020

Dear Ellery Jane,

When I look back on this year for you,

when I see the changes you’ve had to endure,

I am simply amazed by you my precious child.

There was online school thrown together, then a move to the farm.

After a summer of adjusting to the rural world, you were thrust into a new school, a place you’d never been in before, with people you didn’t know wearing masks.

And you showed us all.

You made new friends.

You talked openly about the hard parts.

You reminded us that living in joy doesn’t always mean life’s easy.

Thank you for your honesty, for teaching me to live in truth.

Thank you for your beautiful words each morning and night.

Thank you my wild eyed, inquisitive, imaginative child for making our lives so beautiful.

I love you more then words can say.

Happiest of birthday’s.

Love,

Your one and only Momma

PS- I think we can dance to this one don’t you?

The smells of this place,

the rustling leaves,

the gravel drive,

it will some day fade to memories.

They will laugh about the bonfires that lit the sky ablaze and led them to screech out words to him, wondering whether he would set the barn on fire.

They will be haunted by the coyotes cries.

Their eyes will probably midst when they see an old women feeding ducks at the park pond.

Nothing ever turns out as you imagined.

This blending of families, this his and hers merging to form a space called ours.

One day, they will wonder whether he and her had questioned, had they feared the hardship, the work this place could bring?

Then, very quickly, their gaze will shift. They will think of the love and the weight of the word will come, Home.