Dear Avery,
Where has the time gone? You are getting to be such a big beautiful baby. And you started sitting up on your own today!!! I couldn't wait to come home to you after my trip. I practically ran into the house to see you. Do you know that I fall more in love with you every single day?
Last week I had an accident. These things happen, even to grown-ups. I dropped and broke my laptop. It was like a technological fire. Everything was gone -- my music, my poetry, all of my hundreds of pictures of sweet you. The entire hard drive needed to be replaced. I sat there with the computer doctor as he broke this sad news to me. If this had happened a year ago, I know I would have broken down and sobbed for hours. I would have been just devastated.
But I didn't shed any tears. I was frustrated, yes. But I knew it wasn't the end of the world. I looked at you in your stroller flirting away with the computer doctor and I smiled. And then I thanked God. I dropped a laptop. Not you.
When I was a little girl, your Uncle Craig and I had an accident. We dropped an entire jug of apple juice onto Nannie's kitchen floor while she was outside hanging laundry on the clothesline. This was back in the day when everything was glass. The jug shattered and the juice spilled everywhere. We were terrified. We were sure she would kill us. But to our great surprise, Nannie walked in, looked around and said, "Well, let's start cleaning it up." She wasn't even mad!! Nobody was hurt. It could be fixed.
This was my first lesson in not crying over spilled milk -- or in this case, spilled apple juice. I've thought back to this day often and I've spent my life trying to perfect that calm that Nannie so eloquently modeled for me that day in her juice-covered kitchen.
But this hasn't been easy for me. Some spills just seem bigger than others. Last summer I was in hysterics because I closed the trunk of my car on my sunglasses. I was very far from calm. And it was a pair of sunglasses for pete's sake.
You have given me such a gift, Avery. Perspective. You have taught me to look at life with a whole new set of eyes. You have shown me what matters. You have made the small stuff easier to handle. And you've helped me see that it's almost all small stuff. You've finally brought clarity to the lesson that my grandmother tried so hard to teach me so many years ago.
You, sweet girl, have made my world a happier place. Just by being you.
Love,
Mommy
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