Leguminous

Dear Bean,

We just celebrated your fifth birthday. Five is one of those funny milestones. You’re still little, but about to go off to school for the next thirteen years. I will now share you with a bigger part of the world. Their snacks, their words, their ideas, their feelings, the different ways they play, a new set of rules, etc. And you, sweet girl, are the last one I shuffle off to the world.

Five years feels like a lifetime in many ways. Birthdays of you and your sisters always get me thinking about how strange it is to comprehend that we ever lived without you. If I think too long about it, my heartaches and my head spins, because the idea of a world without any of you in it seems heartbreaking and strange and hollow.

Unlike your sisters, there is something about your milestones that makes them even more wonderfully bittersweet. You’re my last baby. Your milestones are mired in my knowing that they are amazing firsts for you in your life, but also lasts for me. And so, you are the one I never want to hurry. Somehow the universe has kept you little in all these big, amazing ways. If I had to be ready to let the things go as you grow, I would be. Yet, by some benevolence, you and the universe also don’t seem to want to hurry. My heart is grateful for the grace you both show me.

I will forever be grateful that I got to spend the last five years as the person you start your day with. You wake up and find me to snuggle as your first act each day. There was a time I thought my first act of the day should be mediation. Yet, small arms wrapped around my neck always feels like a place where God is. While it is not contemplative in the way I planned, your wonderful love is like a daily prayer and our quiet voices like devotionals: “Good morning, baby girl. How did you sleep?” and a “Good morning, Mama. Good.” It is a small practice of love, devotion and caregiving we exchange each day. Often before anyone else in the house has stirred.

You are about to finish preschool. That building and those people have been in my life for nine years. I know you’re ready for what’s next and it will be equally as magical and special. Kindergarten is filled with some really great things. Yet, I’m a little lost to not have the place that stitched together so much of our lives. Being done with something is not always what comes naturally to your mama. However, you bloomed this year. I am so proud of how much you grew in a time where it was hard to do so. I am so grateful we were brave and sent you in person, full day in the height of the pandemic with no certainties. You thrived– mask, distance, and all. I hear stories of how you help others at pick up. You treat your classmates all as friends. Your heartaches when they cry. You made a best friend and she is wonderful. You sing songs from there all day. Preschool is literally one of my favorite things in the whole world and I am so glad you learned about being in the world at that little building filled with magic, glue sticks, play doh and music.

You are the one who cries at movies with me. Like ugly, grief filled, why-do-bad-things-happen grief. It came as you aged from four to five. Like suddenly you realized how the world ebbs and flows with aches and elations. This week it was the entire last forty-five minutes of Coco where you just understood the bitter sweetest of Coco dying and being with her family, but the loss for Miguel. Last week was in Big Hero 6 when the fire takes Hero’s brother away. Your heart is one that can just empathetically to another as you really follow the whole story. I know you’re in for some parts of life that are tough because of it, but I also know it can be an asset that give you access to things other people don’t get to experience. When you feel the world, it can be a lot, but it also makes you hope filled in a bullet proof way. You know true sadness, but you know true joy too.

Your love is not be deterred. It is a force. Some nights you won’t go to bed until you say good night to your prickly tween sister. Bravely ignoring her rule of no one else on her bed to get a bedtime hug. Sometimes, you plant a kiss on her arm or leg despite her “Ew.” You make her take your love and I’m glad because I think she needs it these days.

I want to remember how you and A play together because it is sweet and lovely. Yet, inevitably you both rub raw and bicker after some time. You, sweet girl, have a hard time with A’s silence. Sometimes you stick up for yourself in ways that makes those who wrong repent. Your sense of fairness is magnetic and pure and contagious. Other times, dear girl, you’re the one who wronged. You struggle as your sister is one who needs a little space and her own thoughts. I know that’s hard for you as you like to hug it out. I teach you to wait a little. Its a hard lesson for you. You say, face tear stained and sunken, “I hurt A’s feelings. It’s breaking my heart,” in the tiny voice you’ll grow out of in the next few years. I know I won’t be able to hold on to the memory, but I hope I hope I do, as your heart and the way to feels is like a shining star of how to be fully in the world, with your people,

You admit to farts with a shrug and a, “I farted,” followed my a giggle. I love the matter of factness you have about it. You don’t have embarrassment or shame over things you know to be small parts of living.

Sometimes you carry things with you and have to repeat them again and again to let them go. I’m like that too. Right now you ask me over and over about when to wash your hands. At first I just told you when in doubt wash them, but that didn’t quite solve things for you. Your little voice finds me and you show me where you touched your face, asking, “I did this. Should I wash my hands?” And now I talk more about how germs spread and differences between being home vs. school, and how its good to have healthy habits.

You ask about when we’ll go on an airplane again and again. We have a while to go until vacation. Time is a funny concept when your five.

You are wonderful and kind and loving. These things make you stronger in a soft way. Don’t forget you can be soft and strong. Sometimes the world tries to tell you they aren’t the same thing. You make us proud. You amaze us. You remind us to be humble in ways we need. You are loved always.

This year as we move through five to six is already amazing a few weeks in. I can’t wait to see all the things that fill the days ahead.

I love you. More than tiny peanut butter cups from Trader Joe’s.

Mom