back to basics

“Back to Basics”

Thanksgiving 2020

Dear Eli,

Happy first Thanksgiving!  We will be celebrating at home apart from our families, but I hope that you will be able to feel the festive spirit in the air with the flurry in the kitchen and the levity of a day free of other commitments.  Originally, we had planned to have a small group at Nai-Nai and Yeh-Yeh’s in NJ, but state limitations on indoor social gatherings caused us to split up into even smaller groups.  Then, to add to the fun, you and your cousin both caught colds, and with travel restrictions for PA imposed, all signs pointed to us canceling our plans altogether.

Sophia must have overheard me (the girl does not miss a thing, I swear) talking to your father about how different Thanksgiving would be this year, because she has been echoing some of what I have said in conversation.  When Poppy was talking last weekend about Christmas coming soon, she exclaimed adamantly, “Don’t forget about Thanksgiving!  We get to play with our people.  We get to be together.”  Not wanting to burst her bubble, I wasn’t ready to tell her then that that actually would not be the case this year.  Even tonight at bedtime when she expressed that “for Thanksgiving, we get to eat with our whole family,” it was hard to find the words to explain that we were not gathering together “because of the germs.”  How does one explain a pandemic to a 5-year-old who was quarantined all spring and most of the summer while I underwent treatments?  Who lost her best friend in the world, her kitty “sister” Bianca, in the midst of all of that?  How do we avoid disappointing her when she has already been through so much – watching me lose my hair, comforting me on those nights before chemo when I would cry at the dinner table, being patient with me as I struggled to keep up with her nonstop energy, knowing which side of my body she could hug without hurting me?  It is so much.  A mom with cancer, a pandemic, and then came you.

You were born on March 18th.  The very next day, the governor of Pennsylvania signed the executive “stay at home” order.  We call you our quarantine baby, because since you were born, we have diligently limited contact with anyone outside of our household because you were so new.  You look into our eyes and can use context clues to recognize when we are smiling, because anyone around you has always worn a mask.  Truly, what a year to come into this world!  Who would have thought that we would not be able to hug and kiss one another, or that gathering around a shared table would logistically be so difficult?  I never imagined that I would be having conversations with your grandparents or aunts through our kitchen window, or that porch drop-offs would become a thing to do to get out of the house to take a ride.  And I never would have believed that my family members would have to wait over 5 long months to hold you for the first time.

Yet, you are simply oblivious to it all and are content as long as you are fed.  You watch your sister with pure adoration, like she is the most amazing person you know (which is true, and I hope is true for years to come).  To our surprise, you just started crawling and are enjoying the freedom to explore.  I watch you sitting up and muse about how big you are getting but at the same time how small you still look in Daddy’s arms.  I cherish that you continue to be a snuggle bug and prefer to nap on top of us, even if that means we cannot get to other things.  Those things can wait.  Yes, those things really can wait.

If there could be one lesson learned this year, it is that we do not need much of what we think we need.  It takes a diagnosis to shift one’s whole perspective.  It takes the loss of human contact to remember how precious it is.  It takes the threat of health to realize how important it becomes to keep your family safe.  It takes the birth of a child during “these unprecedented times” to resolve to be more present than ever before.  And it takes reassuring a 5-year-old that the world she once knew before the germs can still be trusted and forgiving, in time.  It takes patience.  It takes faith.  It takes a little grace.

Eli, we hear others discuss next year and how much they want things to feel “normal” again.  But I cannot forget this year, the year that has become a meme, the year that has been blamed and shamed and shrugged off like an anomaly.  Instead, it is the year that you found your way to us through what seemed like insurmountable odds, our double rainbow who literally stuck with me through my hardest days (a surgery! and chemo! while pregnant! – I will never stop marveling at that), our sweet, sweet miracle.  We have clung to you as you have become our beacon of hope, our shining light – it’s in your bright smile, your gentle touch, it is in the way that you need us.  Thank you, baby, for being a happy boy, for reminding us of the most basic things – love of family, joy for each new day, wonder for the little things, and hope for a better tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving, Anthony Elijah, the first of many more.

Love,

Mommy