Planting the Garden

 Dear Ellie and Maya,

Let's start now from where I left off 8 years ago: with the birth of you, Maya, and the two years we remained with Grandma and Pop Pop at their Florida house, and the place I grew up.  How I remember those two years tends to be like this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

In other words, lots of happy quiet moments with smiles and joy and good camera resolution.  But then I look at the other pictures from that time and realize that it was often like this:

Or this:

Or this:

Life moving by in a frantic, messy, slovenly blur while surviving on toddler scraps.  There were some challenges to be sure, and not just the usual ones related to new parenthood.  The wounds left by prematurity were not yet over.  But we can get to those later.

Aside from those challenges, I can honestly say that this felt almost like the moment my life began.  That whole schtick in my first letter about parenthood "turning up fresh, vast new tracts of my mind that I never knew existed" wasn't just a bunch of pretty words.  It ended up being truer than I could have imagined.  Its hard to understand what parenthood does to your perception of joy and purpose until you've experienced it.  I think most people who haven't been through it look at parenthood and think that they'll feel the same way they did before they had kids, except with less time to enjoy their life.  In reality, parenthood is like a wet-stone.  It sharpens every part of you.  Your emotions, your enjoyment of simple things, your ambitions.  In my 20's before you two came along, each day felt dull and bland.  If my life were likened to food, it would be as though every meal was without salt or spice.  I had all the time in the world to apply myself to goals, but never felt like I had a purpose or reason to.  Now I did, and everything in life came with rich flavor.  Between caring for two kids in diapers (one with special needs) and working two jobs, I'd never had less time, but had never achieved more or experienced more satisfaction with my life.

On the subject of that simple happiness, things I once would have thought were uncomfortable or tedious became moments of quiet beauty.  Pacing the catwalk at night by moonlight at 2 A.M. while feeding you, Maya.  Or Ellie, taking you on our daily hiking adventures through the woods and along the canals.  Or watching the two of you raid Grandma and Pop Pop's garden like mischievous little bunnies.

Here we are Ellie provisioning at the Winged Bean vine before

one of our hiking adventures.

One of our hour long treks out in the fields and 

woods behind South Fork

Mom takes you on some backpack adventures of her own.

The great raid

You tried to escape with your ill gotten

gains, but Dixie Dog caught you!

One of those other simple but unexpected joys was observing your personalities unfold as we played, as you experimented with new food, as you bounced around in your beds while you were meant to be napping.  When I was younger, in my head, I always imagined that children under 4 were more or less like blank sheets of paper that you filled with information.  After you came along Maya, it became ever more clear to me that so much of who we are is set from the very beginning.  From the moment Ellie was born she was bombastic and irrepressible.  She was always kicking or moving or climbing and every second and every day, she was demanding of everyone's attention.  She probably spent 3/4ths of her baby and toddler years in someone's arms not just because there were plenty of adult arms around to do it, but because she demanded it.  We never had to worry what she was up to because she was perpetually narrating her life to us wherever she were.  And when she had a complaint, it was registered with us loudly.

But Maya, you, on the other hand, were the complete opposite.  From the very beginning, you were quiet, contemplative, and observant.  When you made any kind of vocalization, it was melodic, gentle, and sing-songy (it often still is).  Ellie crying sounded like a warthog.  When you cried, it sounded like a chirping little baby bird singing to its mother.  After having a first child that your mother and I could easily echo locate at all times as though we were dolphins, your quiet disposition was disconcerting.  You were easy to lose track of.  Whenever we took the both of you someplace in the car, Ellie would chatter in an endless stream of conscience.  Meanwhile, you wouldn't say a single word.  Once a week, I would panic and think that somehow I might have forgotten you at home, and jerk around in my seat to verify that you were there.  And you always were, gazing quietly out the window as the world passed.

As a side note, I recall once writing in my letters that I thought that you, Ellie, were the cutest baby in the world.  I'm sorry to say that by objective measures of scientific measurement, Maya probably usurped you.  She had ovary-exploding levels of cuteness:

In the years to come Maya, long after you were out of the baby and toddler years, everyone would think you were much younger than you really were.  I know if you ever read this as a teenager you'll hate it, but your mother and I nick named you "perma-baby", because you would continue to have cute baby like characteristics for years and years.  Even during the time you spent at Crystal Lake Elementary School, the adults and older kids gave you the nickname "Baby Shark" and swooned over you.

The irony of your personality is that despite being quiet and observant and cute, you would turn into a little Kamikaze pilot of physicality, throwing yourself into play fighting and any physical activity you happened to be a part of.  You became a little pint size warrior.  Ellie on the other hand--- despite all of her bombasticity--- would become the diplomat and the peacemaker.

A lot of these manifestations of your personalities of course would come later, but as I said, it was all very conspicuous early on in their unrefined forms.  Part of the joy of these early years was watching these core essences of who you were evolve and grow, day by day.

Maya with Nana

Ellie, participating in the harvest

The days right after Maya was born.  We stayed with Nana for

awhile before moving back to the Smith house.

Learning practical skills... sorta.

A cliche tradition that would last a long time: the grandkids 

making baked goods with Grandma.

Here you are at the landing pad of many a future summer trips:

Auntie Danielle and Uncle Zack's house 

And of course, I have to mention also that amid this early time in your lives a third personality was added to the mix as well: your cousin Marianna, who was born a few months after Maya.

All of the Smith grandkids (so far) together

for the first time.

For the most part all was well.  After years of struggling to start a family, it felt like we were finally settling in to the life that we'd always fought so hard for.  And yes, there were moments of frustration.  Ellie, your endless doctors appointments.  Maya, your extreme reluctance to eat and the mystery of why your speech was delayed.  But your mother and I never once at any moment regretted that this was what we'd chosen.  I never missed what my life was like before you two came.  Even with the residual NICU health issues, rather than making me sorrowful or wistful for an easier version of parenthood, it put in me a determination to want to protect what we now had.  Having you made me want to be better.

So at exactly the moment I had the least amount of time in my entire life (right after you were born, Maya), I decided to do something entirely unexpected with my life: I started making computer software.  It was a thing I had always wanted to do (and failed at repeatedly), and Nana had proven that there were a lot of jobs in the field that were richly rewarding, both financially and with great insurance (which to me, was the golden ticket for dealing with your health issues, Ellie).

The problem?  I was already working with aquariums, teaching night classes, and caring for you guys.  I also had almost no idea how to actually program computers or make software.  And we certainly didn't have the money for me to go back to college, as would have been the appropriate path.  I look back now and it seems like a ridiculous thing to try to do on the surface, but it makes sense in one particular way.  My 20's had been defined by trying and failing at just about everything.  I started businesses which limped along, I got a college degree that wouldn't land me a career, I took jobs that were never destined to go anywhere.  I started to feel like I just wasn't the kind of person who was meant to truly succeed at anything.  But then you two came, and I was finally succeeding at something: fatherhood.  So maybe I could succeed at something else, as well.

So at any free moment when I wasn't working or caring for you two, I was teaching myself how to program computers.  All of my normal hours were accounted for with work or childcare or chores, so I feverishly woke up at 4 in the morning to work on it, clacked away at the keyboard when you were down for naps, wrote code on my phone while I was out at work or during our hikes, or stayed up late to work until I nearly fell asleep at the keyboard.  It was probably the busiest time of my life, and I don't recall taking a single weekend off for years.  I remember many an early morning or late night glued to my 3 monitors, shuffling around code and collaborating with developers around the world in this very spot:

Sometimes I brought you guys along for the journey as well.

                                     

Its important to mention that I had one key, essential ingredient that made this possible: 3 grandparents, 2 dedicated parents, and lots of other family and friends who pitched in with you guys!  And perhaps most important, your mother was willing to support me in my hair brained scheme.  This was the beginning of a journey that would eventually lead us to our home now in North Carolina.

I remember the thing that kept me going was the thought: "even if this doesn't amount to anything for me, at least I can teach my girls one day."  About a year and a half in, I almost even quit.

One day when we were playing in the pool your mother and I noticed something odd about you, Ellie.  It's a thing we had vaguely noticed before, but I think we tried to explain away until it was too obvious.  Your right eye was beginning to conspicuously bulge from its socket.  We took you to the doctor, who then ordered imaging.  At the hospital, they gave you general anesthesia, you went to sleep, and a very large man carried your limp little body away through two large double doors to be imaged.  For some reason, all I could see at that moment was this again:

 

It had been over 2 years since you left the NICU, and while we had drifted more and more toward a life of normalcy, those old feelings of fear and grief had never quite left me.  For all the happy moments we had, there was always a quiet, sinister whisper in the back of my head.  A feeling that we were only allowed to have this happiness so that the grief would be that much worse when you were taken away from us.  I was always wondering around which corner that thing would come, and in what form.  And so when we found a tumor wedged between your skull and your eye, I thought: "Of course, so this is how she's taken away from us."

At first, it wasn't clear what exactly it was, or how it got there.  Whatever it was, it hadn't been there before you left the NICU.  But once again, back to that frantic mental space we went, scouring through medical documents, trying to discern what it was and how it might hurt you.  As it turns out, it was a very rare tumor called a "lymphatic malformation of the orbit."  On the one hand, we were relieved to know that it was not cancerous.  Unfortunately, it was still dangerous, and would grow faster than your head, meaning you would likely lose your right eye or at least vision, suffer from seizures, and the tumor would gradually wear away at your skull.  Its common that children with these malformations to have significantly limited childhoods.  We went to numerous doctors, who told us that because the condition was so rare, there was no treatment for it.

This wasn't an answer we were willing to accept.

Like I did back in the NICU, I scoured through medical white papers and followed the citation trail to leaders in the field.  After a few weeks of searching, I discovered that there was one man, Dr. William Shiels, who pioneered a unique, non-invasive treatment for the condition.  Under general anesthesia, he used tiny needles the size of mosquito proboscis to enter above and below the eye, extract fluid from the various parts of the tumor, and then inject a chemo agent.  I was ecstatic to discover there was a solution!  Unfortunately, I was heartbroken when I discovered the surgeon's recent obituary.  The man who had pioneered the treatment just a few short years ago had died 6 months prior to us discovering your tumor.  After some more digging, however, it turns out he had an understudy who was still continuing the treatment: Dr. Murakami.  After we spoke with him, we were told you were a great candidate for the procedure.  So off to Ohio we went, to visit Nationwide Children's Hospital.

Despite the occasion, the visit to the sprawling hospital complex was actually a bit of an adventure.  We stayed at the Ronald McDonald's house--- with its many fun-rooms loaded with toys and giant stuffed animals--- and the hospital itself was scenic and beautiful.  On our free time before and after the procedure, we packed you into your backpack and we explored the ins and outs of the hospital in search of secret toilets.

Still, this was not a vacation.  You were neither a fan of being poked by more needles nor a fan of getting put under.  It was difficult to watch.  You'd already been put through so much already.  Getting an IV in you or blood work done was a herculean task.  Every time you saw a needle come out, you'd turn into the incredible hulk.

Ellie, pre-op

 

Ellie post op

In the end, you responded very well to the treatment, even though it made you look like you'd been socked in the eye.  Also, the treatment was not a permanent solution.  It could only shrink the tumor for a time, and so we would be returning many times to shrink it as it continued to try to grow.  Still, it was a small price to pay for a normal childhood.  Those old feelings of fear and grief began to subside once again, and we slid back into a sense of normalcy in life.

Our first Halloween, all together

Maya and Pop Pop quietly observe 

the world together

Ellie, with uncle Zack

Ellie, with uncle Shane

While this was invisible to the two of you, in the 4 years we were at Grandma and Grandpa's home, your mother and I were paying down all of the debts we'd incurred in medical bills and the fertility treatments of the past.  We'd even sold our old house early on to make sure that we were out from under any unnecessary expenses while you, Ellie, were at a medically vulnerable (and expensive) time.  We never wanted to be in a position where we couldn't afford all of your various treatments.

4 years into staying with Grandma and Grandpa, however, things were looking up for us.  Your mother's career was doing well and I was earning more working with your uncle on aquariums.  I was even making some money on a software business while I was learning how to program.  So finally, after working hard and living like monks, we were debt free and ready to graduate to the next phase of our family: getting out on our own.

In a way, the time we spent with Grandma and Grandpa reminds me a lot of the rhythm of the seasons in your Grandmother's garden.  Every grow season, before the delicious bell peppers and fresh kale or tomatoes, there comes the hard work of preparing the vegetable beds and planting the seeds.  Likewise, we were preparing the soil and planting the seeds of a happy family.  And if we had enjoyed the prior 4 years, the next 3 years that would follow on Moseley Street would be the beginning of the "Magic and Mystery" years.  A time when you'd commune with Tomtens deep in the forest, hunt for buried treasure, expand our search from "secret toilets" to "secret doors", ambush Santa Claus, and more.  But I'll save that for another day.

I love you two, and I'll write to you again soon.

Grandma's Garden

The Bookend

Dear Ellie and Maya,

Opps.

So I said I'd be documenting your childhood for posterity, but here we are 8 years later, and no letters.  But don't worry!  I have lots of great excuses that are partially true and which won't make you feel better about it!

As it turns out, when it comes to parenting, actually creating good memories and trying to build a good childhood for your kids invariably competes for the same time that is required to thoroughly document all of those good memories and good childhood experiences.  And if I'm being completely honest, sometimes Earthly ambitions--- pursued with the pretext of being a good provider for our family--- played a part as well.  But that didn't last for long.  A plague came to our rescue.  But we can talk about all of that, later.

For now, though, its summer and we've come back to Florida where we started: Grandma and Grandpa's house, the place you both spent your earliest years.  

Complete with lazy days in the pool.

I feel like maybe that's one reason why I've started writing to you both again.  There are so many little things that spur memories of when you were little.  But aside from that, you are both now old enough that we have begun reading Letters to Ellie together.  And old enough for you, Maya, to say "Hey!  Where's Letters to Maya!" (Opps, again.)  

I'm still grateful for those old letters, though.  Over the past 8 years it has been a kind of script for your childhood, and an instruction manual for the kind of father I wanted to be.  Your mother and I made a point to insure that many of the themes and characters of the letters intersected with your childhood, too.  Treasure hunts with the Tomtens, a Curse by the Crimson Pumpkins, the Smith Family Haunted House, over the top holiday antics, little pranks we play on each other, and all manner of silly games that send laughter echoing through the house.  And most important of all, a calm, happy home life.

At times, too, I would make mistakes, feel too proud to admit it to myself, and then remember the promises I'd made.  Those aggravating, implausible, lofty promises... but which I knew I should try my best to keep.  And so they often woke me up and brought me back to being the father I wanted to be. 

You are now both old enough to understand all of the stories, too.  It's surprising to see which ones you each take to the most.  At the moment, you, Maya, ask for the stories in the evening the most often.  You enjoy the mystical and ethereal ones.  This summer, while we've been back, we've visited the bicycle in the tree with your sister and your cousin, Marianna.  We've gone out at night and looked at its silhouette against the evening Twilight (it's still there 10 years after having written the story!), searched for clues, and grappled with strange events (like the engine of our van stalling, which I assure you wasn't just me kicking the transmission into neutral...)  Then we'd go home to read the story of how it got there, and whether the curse of the bicycle in the tree might be coming for you, your sister, and cousin next.  The story weighed most heavily on you and Marianna, while Ellie did everything in her power to provoke the Ghost of Adrianne Miller.  At night, you'd all cram in to bed together for protection, and gaze out the family room window for signs of the rusty old bicycle.

The bicycle still haunts Foxwood...

You, Maya, also seem to love The Girl in the Sphere, which is entirely in keeping with your personality.  Even at the youngest age, you were quiet and thoughtful.  The type to gaze longingly out of windows or intently at some tiny crystal you found out by the firepit.  You remind me of The Girl: finding contentment in contemplation of the world.  But then I am afraid sometimes that I might be like The Sphere.

My Girl in the Sphere

Meanwhile, Ellie, you seem to be drawn to the stories which are strange and otherworldly.  Unexpectedly, at the moment, you are fascinated by the two short stories about Far Spirit and the Soul Kind.  Stories about strange beings in another place that use the body parts of their deceased relatives as tools.  I feel like you love the story not just because it shows how strange the creatures are, but that it also turns that feeling around to show us how strange and interesting we are as well.  I've promised you that we'll finish writing Far Spirit and the Soul Kind, and because you are already becoming a writer yourself, the next one will be Part Three, by Dana and Ellie Smith.

The Soul Kind.

And then there is The Clockmaker's Daughter.  You know the story is about you, and so you seem to love it as well.  And because you know that story cuts deep for me, you've at times taken advantage of this fact.  Like at bedtime, when you want to stall me so you can stay up later, you'll sometimes melodramatically quote passages from the story: "Don't go Dad.  'Hold my hand and never let go'."  

Well played, Ellie.  Well played.

The Clockmaker's Daughter

Unexpectedly again, perhaps the mutual favorite of you both is The Viking vs the Sandwich.  It's wacky and whimsical and lyrical, yes, but it also has a historical setting, and most kids have a natural resentment of when parents try to sneak education into things that are fun.  But as it turns out, you both have developed a love of history.  Every time I give you two a choice between the Viking vs the Sandwich or anything else, you choose the Viking vs the Sandwich so that you can hear again the tale of Hamburg and the battle that took place between their champion--- The Sandwich--- and the evil Ungar the Stout.

Ungar vs a gallant Sandwich

The fact that we have begun reading the stories and letters together has made it seem like this moment is a bookend of the past 8 years.  And a time to fill in the gaps for posterity, with new letters.  And why shouldn't I?  The past 8 years have been the very best of my life.  It's unfolded the way one imagines a "happily ever after" would.  I remember when I was writing the Clockmaker's Daughter, I felt that if I had just a tiny fraction of what I have now, I would be happy.  And yet we have so much more than that, now.  We have fun and whimsy and prosperity and, most importantly, each other.

I remember before you two were born, I used to think that the human brain was adapted to never actually feel any kind of permanent happiness.  I thought that the idea of happiness existed as a sort of carrot that dangled in front of us to drive us forward, but which we were never meant to reach.  A mirage on the horizon.  I know now that this idea of mine was definitively, unambiguously, unequivocally false.  Things turned out exactly how I wanted it to be, and I am happy.  And yet I wonder about that phrase.

"How I wanted it to be."

Should everything turn out the way I wanted it to be?  Should children be everything their fathers want them to be?

I remember in my very first letter, I telegraphed my fear that perhaps neither of you would like the things your mother and I do, or share our values.  The irony now is that you are both almost exactly what we wanted.  It's filled my heart with pride, but made me wonder whether it was fair, and whether--- by pouring my heart out about what I wanted our lives and your future to look like--- I was putting my thumb too heavily on the scale of your own self-discovery.  Am I allowing you to be your own persons, or am I sculpting you into scripted characters in another one of my stories.  Characters that exist not for themselves, but to make a point.

For instance Ellie, a few months back, I noticed you with the hard copy of all of our stories on the third floor.  At the beginning was the first letter I wrote, A Father's Humble Wish.  You'd been reading it on your own.

I remember in that first letter, I wrote: 

It’s my sincerest hope that, one day, I will hand you a thumb drive filled with these letters.  And then, I hope, you will browse through them casually and conclude that they are all very dull and tedious.  I hope that you will sigh and roll your eyes and say, “Uggh, why does Dad always make me read all this stuff?” and then, to your mother and father's horror, you’ll go back to playing with Barbie Dolls, obsessing about boys, and slacking off in school.  

Yeah, I know.  There are many greater things that I could wish for you.  I could wish that, like your mother and father, you might have an insatiable sense of curiosity.  I could wish that you might love science and literature.  That you might never grow tired of fun and play.  That you might always search for excuses to be joyous.  At this moment, though, it seems greedy to wish for much more than one simple thing: that you will live at least one more day.  To wish for anything more than that seems like a lot to ask for.

At 10 now, all of the things I feared you'd be are not true at all, and all the things I hoped you would be have come true.  Suspiciously true.  At first, I thought this was just who you were, but over time, I began to wonder whether maybe you were eager to please me by following this script I had unintentionally written for you.  That in all of these stories with their parables and morals and promises about how I wanted our lives to be, these stories and letters and family mythology which were meant to be about worlds to explore and whimsy and a joyous kind of freedom were instead each serving as a fence post to hem you in, and make you the way that I wanted you to be.  When I saw you reading that first letter, you looked up at me with a clever little smile and said something to the effect of "Did you get more than your humble wish?"

I see this in you too, Maya, in the way that you take after you mother.  How you have taken such an interest in Geology, and how your mother beams in pride at following in her footsteps.

Are we pressuring you both down this road?  My impulse now is to say "this is not what I want for you," but that seems wrong, too, because in the end, what I want is for you to one day get what you want for yourselves.  It is more important to me that you both be the best versions of yourselves rather than to be exactly like your mother and I, or want what we want.  And yes, in the same way that I resemble your grandfather and grandmother (and am proud of it), I suspect you will be like your mother and I as well.  But don't be afraid to venture out from the comforting shores of your parents' embrace if the vision we have for your lives do not match your own.  I want these stories and letters and your childhood to be the fertile soil that nourishes your growth into a complete people, not the pot of a banzai plant, meant to twist and contort you to the vain whims of a grower.

My impulse now is to point to another one of our stories to illustrate this point--- The Man at the Edge of the World--- and its lesson about self determination and defining your own purpose in life.  But see?  I'm doing it again.  

Just know that I will be proud of all the ways you do end up like your mother and I, but I will be just as proud when you write your own letters, write your own stories, and find your own purpose.

I love you both, and will write to you again soon.

That time when the snake in our trunk ate half the kids

at your school during Trunk or Treat, and we won

"creepiest family" award.  Or scariest trunk.  Or something

like that.