Sometimes I've Believed As Many As Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast*

Dear Finnegan,

 
Today you are six. I woke early to take you to Dunkin' Donuts for a breakfast of hydrogenated fats and high-fructose corn syrup, for which opportunity you got dressed extra fast, even producing clothes for the Bean in record time so he could come, too. Nothing gets you going like dessert for breakfast (You're just like me that way. Sorry.). When I started the car, NPR came on and I learned what half the world already knew: Osama Bin Laden has been killed.

I don't know how I feel about this. I try to keep these birthday letters very personal, but this news feels personal. The war on Afghanistan began in 2001 and the war on Iraq began shortly before your brother Jack was born in 2003. Your Uncle Luke has done more than one tour of duty in the Middle East. Your dad's cousin Josh has been there, too. It seems that everyone knows someone who has been there. Many who have gone have not returned.

We have eaten, breathed and slept with the war on terror for ten years. Whether we are directly involved or not, not one of us can escape the grip terrorism has on our world. I just wanted to buy you some donuts, but reality bared its teeth and bit me through the car stereo. You, of course, will not remember this day. I only record it here because I think someday you will want to know what your parents thought about this. I don't know what to tell you, except this: I'm sorry. I'm sorry we've made a world for you where human life is valued so very little. I'm sorry that extremism is the order of the day. I'm sorry that death is being celebrated on the day we celebrate the singular miracle of your birth.

Don't get me wrong; I think Osama Bin Laden was an evil, misguided, hateful man. I was as riveted and as heartbroken and as terrified as anyone by the tragedy of 9/11. But I do not think, not for one nanosecond, that throwing an impromptu party outside the White House or at Ground Zero in the wee hours is fitting. We cannot honor the dead by celebrating more death. Instead, I choose to focus on the small things. The way you wrinkle your nose when you smile, the sprinkling of freckles across your cheeks, the aroma of homemade almond cake baking in your honor. Your little brother asleep on the couch under his favorite blanket, his ridiculous, beautiful eyelashes nearly touching his cheeks. The way Jack gets so involved in what he's reading that he stops noticing anything else.

 
The small things, the impossibly you things about the three of you: these are what keep me tethered to Earth when it feels like the ground has fallen out from under me.

 
You have grown tall. There is nothing you won't eat. You laugh easily. You are a peace maker and the most empathic of my children. You are secretly everyone's favorite, because something in your sweet nature makes other people feel at ease with you. You listen more than you talk. You are an integral piece of us.

 
When you remember your sixth birthday, I want you to remember these things: that your dad and I are doing everything in our power to make this a world a place that won't scare the hell out of you. That terrible things do happen, and that it's our job to teach you and your brothers to perservere in the face of great sorrow and even greater destruction. That maybe Gandi was right, and maybe an eye for an eye really does end up making the whole world blind. That maybe the impossible things we believe in are the only things worth having anyway. We want so much for you.

Love,

Mom

*Quote by Lewis Carroll

Comments

[Gwendo Mama]

That was beautiful. Happy Birthday, Finn. And Marci, thank you for finding the words to express my feeling of extreme confusion and inner-conflict today.
<3