Three Years

Dear Tiller,

Yesterday, you turned three years old. Yes, I was too busy to write this on your birthday, but don't think for a minute that throughout the day i wasn't constantly reminded that it was three years to the day that you had come into our lives.

It is hard to look back on a year and remember all of the things that have changed in your life and ours in just one year. A lot has happened to us this year - We have lost your Meemaw, and Pop is in Assisted Living. That is very different. I am so glad that they have been a part of your life. I never knew a one of my great-grandparents. We moved this year, from the house in East Atlanta, where you came home and danced and sang your way into our lives. And boy do you dance and sing. You make up songs about any and everything, and sometimes I am amazed at the lyrics you come up with. You have discovered princesses. The damn Disney crap. (And yes, your mama cusses, too.) Princess dresses, tiaras, little plastic heels, and jewelry. You also love babies - You carry two or three around at a time, and we all pretend to take care of them, and your face just lights up when you realize we are playing along. This is the year that the dog and cats have realized that they like you - they are no longer scared of you, and the cats will sit next to you when you watch tv. Let's see - Shows you like are still Dora, and Franklin, and Max and Ruby. You like Rollie's Speed Racer cartoons on DVD. We have started making you watch Sesame Street in the mornings, just because we wanted you to learn to recognize letters when you see them. We also let you play the ABCs on starfall.com. I am amazed that you picked up using the touchpad on the laptop so quickly; I think you are better at it than your grandma.

You sleep so well, and go right to sleep at night. Well, sometimes you sing yourself to sleep, but you do not fight us when we put you down. You and Daddy and Rollie get up in our bed and read at night, and this year, Daddy started reading The Tale of Despereaux to you, and you wiggle and don't really get any of it, but i think it is pretty neato the way y'all pile up every night. I still sing the medley to you some nights. Some nights you want me to make your bear talk to you, so I do that instead. But i still love singing Bitsy, Sunshine, and Twinkle to you. I will be sad one day when I realize it is the last time I sang it to you.

We moved out of the old house in February, and we didn't have the new house yet, so we lived at the lake for a month. It was very strange living there, but you and Rollie and I explored middle Georgia, and went on lots of "adventures" where you learned about nature, and got dirty, and threw rocks at trees, and found bugs. I was glad, because I worry that you and Rollie have nature deprivation sometimes.

You have a cute room in our new house, green and pink. You are in a big girl bed, with one of the twin beds that came from the lake when Dad bought the iron queen bed for up there. Rollie has the other one in his room, but someday I'd like for you to have them both for sleepovers. Dad says that Grandma and Pop got those twins out of an old house in Macon, but I don't think they are that old.

You started a new preschool this year at a local church. You love it. You go three days/week, and are one of the oldest in your class, which means that you are a lot bigger than some of them. Last year, you called the little ones in your class "my babies," but you don't do that this year. I miss that.

One big thing that happened this year is that you learned to go potty. You wear big girl undies and once you got started, you really took off with it. It makes my life so much easier, but sometimes I miss the closeness that comes with having to change someone's diaper. I know that sounds crazy, but it is true. You and Rollie just don't need me that way anymore. It is a milestone, albeit a strange one.

Another huge thing that happened this year is that you learned to swim! You are my little fish girl, and can hold your breath underwater. I was so proud of you.

We had a birthday party for you on Sunday. it was a costume party, and you were a princess. You changed your mind about five times about what you wanted to be. A rat, a dog, a princess, dora. We had black and orange cupcakes. You ate two. Guests at the party were your Johnson grandma and papaw, Lyle and Denise, Lisa, mark, and Dash. Grandma and Papaw palmer were at a family reunion. Jason and Elle came - she was a princess, too. As was Trisha. Her brother Nolan was Boba Fett. Leah and Sydney came, too. I think Sydney was Luke Skywalker, and Leah was Dorothy Gale. Charla and Julianne were fairies. Scarlett was Batgirl. Her mama was a kitty cat! It was much, much fun. We decorated the backyard and had the party out there, because the weather was so nice. We ordered a pizza later, and stayed up way too late for a school night, but it was fun. Last night was your birthday, and so we made your meal request: Mac and cheese, oranges, and green grapes. They had to be green. We had chocolate cake for dessert. You blew out the candle like a flash.

One day, if you are a mother, you will understand that women are like salmon and their bodies remember and their minds go back yearly to the days their offspring entered the world. Ten or twenty times day before yesterday, I thought, "oh, this is about the time I called Todd, because I just felt a little off," or "funny that I am in the car at six p.m. tonight. I remember leaving Rollie with Lisa and going out to the cul-de-sac and getting in the red tiger wagon to go to the hospital." It was a Friday, rush hour in Atlanta (doesn't that just figure) and your father put on a CD he had made with mellow songs on it. The song was "The Scarlet Tide" from the Cold Mountain soundtrack. Yes, I have probably written that to you before, but it still makes me laugh, and i promised your father I would never let him live it down; He put a song on about blood and death and carnage as he drove me to the hospital in labor. I remember thinking before I went to bed that it was about the time they gave me the benedryl and told me to get some sleep, that it would be four or five hours til you were ready to come out. It was only almost two, and i was so tired when they woke me up. I remember thinking, "just a few more minutes of sleep." I had done this before. I knew i would get no sleep for a long time. We had to shake your daddy to wake him up. It was five til midnight when they readied everything for you, and Ruth said if we hurried, we could have a baby on the 7th, and if we took our time, on the 8th. You came on the eighth, but just barely.

Your birth was a blessing and it was the way I imagined birth should be, and I am so grateful that you gave that to me in your coming into the world. Rollie's birth I sometimes go over in my head like a car wreck, like i do the accident that your Daddy and I had one Memorial Day, when I hit my head and can't remember a huge chunk of time. I go back to that over and over, trying to find those lost moments, and never can. I go over Rollie's birth and try to remember when it started going wrong, and how it felt, worrying it like a little hole in a blanket. But not yours, yours is just a succession of happy thoughts: Laughing with your father before you came out, the funny deer-in-headlights look on his face when I brought up changing your name at the last minute, holding you right when you came out and no one worriedly waiting to whisk you away from me, and the first time you latched on, right away, like we were made for each other.

Knowing that you were my Matilda, my daughter, just like I am Virginia's Annie, born in that very same hospital, and mama was Vivian's Baby, born in Chattanooga, and that one day my grandma was her mother Ida's baby, come into the world in Lee County, NC. I remember thinking that we are a chain, unbroken, but each a charm, dangling and flashing in the sunlight, and in the darkness, too.

Tiller from two to three years, on my Flickr.