εὐχαριστία (eucharistia)

Dear Cece,

Today is the last day of November, and on this day, I want to teach you about the Greek word eucharistia, which is translated as “thankfulness” or “gratitude.” Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, but the act of thanksgiving is much, much older. Our theology will tell you that thanksgiving is the first and fundamental creaturely act–even before fiat. When we come to rationally understand what and who we are–and through this understanding, all that has been given to us–then we come to understand that the first response to our existence must always be gratitude. Following gratitude is fiat–a total, unreserved gift of self back to the Creator who first gave you to yourself. As Saint John Paul the Great reminds us, man is a creature who can only find himself through a complete and sincere gift of self.

As you grow, my love, I hope to infuse the theology of gift into every aspect of our life so that it doesn’t feel like a matter of high theology. Indeed, there is nothing abstract or theoretical about it. Fiat is deeply enfleshed, written into the codes that program our DNA, thrumming like a drumbeat through the blood that pulses our veins, dancing like refracting sunlight in the blue galaxies of your eyes. You cannot have fiat without free will, and you cannot have fiat without a body.

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This autumn, thanksgiving has felt more like an act than a holiday. It has felt like a choice, a presence, a rhythm that is guiding my life. I do not forget who I am or what I have endured; I cannot remember your sister’s death without being grateful for her life. It has taken me thirty-five years for thanksgiving to become a verb, but I have lived the life I’ve lived, and I would choose no other.

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This autumn, we took bike rides at sunrise and went fossil hunting at Calvert Cliffs. We had a five-course duck dinner at a wildflower farm and walked barefoot through November waves. I took you to pumpkin patches and apple orchards where we munched on Staymans and Braeburns and sawed broccoli from its primordial leafy bower. We roasted butternut squash and pie pumpkins, made apple cider and apple butter and carved a mama and baby pumpkin (complete with glasses) for Halloween. We went on hayrides with your Nana, raspberry picking with your aunts, and walks with your Granpda, and everyone listened in delight as you mimicked nearly everything we said. We visited your Nana’s new puppy and your great-grandmother at once, experiencing life at its beginning and the very peak of its fulfillment. We fermented the last of the peppers from the garden and watched the leaves turn from green to gold to vermilion and flaming orange. We snuggled before fireplaces and bundled up in coats, hats, and mittens for our bike rides. We shucked oysters and made cornbread from masa harina. We spoke with friends who live days and states away and visited your sister’s and your great grandfather’s graves. We watched the days grow shorter and held one another through increasingly long nights.

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I walked with you through these autumn days, watching you lift leaf, twig, and stone to place in your bucket at outdoor kindergarten. I held you as you slept on my chest, listening to the waves kiss the shore with slow, rhythmic promise. I rocked you through thunderstorms and sat outside with you as we listened to a orchestra of acorns knock at the chilling ground. You hold my hand as we walk, your little hands clasping my forefinger and pinky finger with both trepidation and determination. You are desperate to dress and feed yourself and show me how you can put away clean spoons and flush the potty all by yourself.

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This morning, you sang along perfectly to “Jingle Bells” and touched my warm mug, saying intensely, “Mommy tea is hot.” You love collecting cinnamon-scented candles and handing them to me one-by-one, pre-empting my repeated, “Thank you, baby.” You dazzled everyone at the Thanksgiving table by showing them how you can select a triangle, circle, heart, star, rectangle, oval, square, and diamond by feel. Sometimes, you wake in the middle of the night to tell me that you want raspberries, then change your mind to ask for rib or toesie bites or tummy snacks. You love rolling a beach ball back and forth with me, then quest for a “small ball” to show me that you can bounce it to me with as much accuracy as the “big ball”. For weeks, I asked you to say, “more eggies, please,” with no response, until last week, you began asking for “more eggies, please” with perfect manners.

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You can recite Moo, Baa, La La La by Sandra Boynton from memory and sing “Old MacDonald had a Farm” without missing an animal. You like to cross your ankles, hold a cup of blueberries in your lap, and tell me, “It’s a blueberry,” with every blueberry you eat. You get frustrated if I don’t allow you to brush your own hair or close the door behind us. You ask each morning if we’re going on a bike ride or car ride, then tell me you want to sit in your bike seat or car seat. And when you sit in your car seat, you pick up the rocks and shells we gathered from the bay and tell me, “rock” and “shell,” and I smile and tell you that you are my beautiful baby.

You are speaking more than Lizzy did before she died. You are fully two-and-a-half years old, and we are well into unfamiliar territory for me. As the days pass, I recognize more and more that I don’t have the answers to parenting or relationships or eternity. Instead, I’m trying to take it one day at a time and sometimes one hour at a time, focusing on the task at hand, and doing what I can.

I wish this for you, Cecilia–that humility will come to you with age and that the need to control and orchestrate your life or the lives of others will fade with maturity. That you can focus on what you have and not on what you lack. That your life can consist of acts of praise rather than acts of complaint or condemnation.

I am far from the woman, the daughter, the sister, or the mother that I want to be. I think I will spent my whole life trying to improve myself. But with this intention is coming an acceptance of who I am that has never before guided my thoughts. I know that what I am and what I do boils down to trying–trying and trying again, each time increasing will, determination, and intention. Who I am is to get up every time I find myself on the ground and decide to stand taller and firmer this time. I am so far from the evanescent horizon of perfect that I could spend the rest of my life sprinting headlong towards that sunset and never reach it. But if who I am is the act of trying, then the destination of perfection begins to matter less and less. And yet, I will never stop chasing it because I believe that pursuit is what it means to be human.

Trying is a choice, but so too is being present in your imperfection. And I think this presence is what is allowing me to engage in the act of thanksgiving. I lack a husband, but I have a family who love both you and me deeply. I lack Lizzy, but you are alive and infinitely with me. I lack a home, but I have the determination and drive to create a world for you and me that has thus far only existed in my dreams. It is so hard these days to focus on what I don’t have because I am finally able to understand that I have so very much. It is hard to focus only on Lizzy’s death, because the wonder and gratitude for her life will always overshadow the omnipresence of my grief.

Advent has begun, Christmas is coming, and time feels too fast and too slow all at once. It’s speeding by and stretching on without cease, and I am left breathless and struggling. There is too much in this world, in this life, in my mind and my heart and my body to compass, contain, or articulate. There is too much to hold, too much to want, too much to give, too much for which to be grateful. And you, my darling, are at the center of that gratitude. You, my love, remain the reason why I chose to life over death, love over despair. And you will be the person I will work for and towards with all of my energy, for as long as life animates my flesh.

Today, I choose you, Cecilia. I choose life. I choose gratitude. I choose eucharistia. The rest will come with time.

Happy Thanksgiving, my sweet baby,

Mama