Lullaby to life

The first letter from Jeannine arrived days after Jack was born.  Holding it now, I can feel who I was then in the slanted light of those early hours, unmoored in the ebb tide of new parenthood.  Although she wrote the letter to Jack, I felt cradled in the comfort of her words.  Both life line and love letter.

“We’ve not yet met, my lovely godson, and I already feel like I know you so well.  You see, you have been weaving your way into the lives of your mom, your dad, and thereby me, for the past nine months – and longer, if I think back to when your parents first started thinking about the possibility of you …”

Beginning with the fateful day we met in high school, to my first kiss with Derek that she and I celebrated across an ocean, to my phone call to her from the hospital’s maternity wing, Jeannine wove humor and heart into her thoughts on how Jack evolved from a notion to a newborn. 

“You were no small project, sweetest boy,” she wrote, with an additional wry postscript:  “You may want to read this letter frequently between the ages of 13 and 21 years.  Trust me on this one.”   

Every year since then, Jeannine has crafted a birthday blessing to Jack.  The priceless pages stream memories of meeting her godson for the first time, making drip castles, cherishing his mispronunciation of her name, sitting in the audience of his preschool play, offering a meditation on the art of letting go.

With each letter, I hear the song between the lines.  A lullaby to life.  The chorus we all want to hear:  I see you and believe in all that you are. 

The unconditional, unparalleled gift of posting memories to his future self.  In Jeannine’s recent words, a benediction:  “Through it all, you will be loved beyond measure.  And I am always just one ‘hello’ away.”