DEAR RADLEY
(A week ago, my sister gave birth to a brave new soul. I thought I’d write a letter introducing her to this great unknown called life.)
Dear Radley,
Welcome to Earth. It will be some time before you can read this letter on your own, but I am writing it to you now, while you are still soft and small, in the hopes that on some level, perhaps energetically, these words will find and carry you through your becoming.
I like a few things about Earth. I like deserts, how they give off this illusion of being barren, but if you slow down and pay attention, looking deep into impossible reds & ambers, the whole place is exploding with life. I like seeing my dad (your Papa) paddling in his green boat which he has damaged & repaired for fifty years, reading the river effortlessly, leading the group the same. I like cities, where all kinds of people cram into underground trains, moody with each other, defensive of their space even though I’m certain a herd of them would rush to someone’s side if they were in peril. I like when I make your dad laugh, a true belly laugh, his quiet energy softening into a fiery grin. I like water bottles on a Colorado coffee table when friends gather, the colorful patch of vessels like a field of wildflowers. I like the thaw of winter, how my body doesn’t know time, and when I feel spring coming I can close my eyes and be every age I've ever been at once. I like when my beloved (your aunt Lacey) makes me a new playlist and I fall in love with her all over again. I like salt on cucumbers in the summer, especially when my mom (your Gaga) slices them long, fresh from her garden, and serves them to me on those blushing china plates. I like cats but I also like dogs (life is never either/or and you can roll your eyes at anyone who says it is.) I like when my wisest friend, Delia, pulls out her camera to record the pan as I fry her an egg because, she explains, the sizzling sound is art, and she is following her urge to create even if she doesn’t know what yet. I like when I take a walk to stave off a sad day and a hawk or an owl appears, stoic & numinous in the face of my worry. Your mother—the way she gives me permission to be exactly who I am—I like absolutely everything about her.
The reason I am naming what I like is because it is very easy to dislike this place you have been born into: our earth brim with injustice and suffering. The poet Maggie Smith writes in Good Bones, “For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.” Which is to say, for each delightful pleasure there is a system designed to destroy it. I won’t name those. Not now. But in time I will help you learn their intricacies and support you in being a force against their destruction. I don’t mean to be negative, I mean to be honest about what world you’re inheriting and fierce in my power to be an everlasting refuge for you. I mean to welcome you to this world’s sanctuaries far more than thrust you into its troubles.
I am not writing to be morally didactic, to give you advice, or tell you who/how to be. Only you can tell me how you want to be. This writing is my first attempt to be your sanctuary: to put language to the inarticulate joys and despairs of living, so that you may find harbors in the challenges of this world—so that you can safely and securely be the wild thing you deserve to be. In no particular order I’ve captured a few thoughts I know to be true in this world. They are not prescriptions for living, but rather, reminders to return to on the often liminal journey.
The nation of people who love you is breathtaking. It’s every note on a piano. Every chord. Every song. Its music reverberates forwards and backwards in time. You are loved by a million beautiful, flawed, individual people. They will love you in a million beautiful, flawed, individual ways.**
Your wisdom is worthy. Your proclivity for one color over another, one fruit instead of another, a certain activity in place of another, a particular friend rather than another—all of that is the humming feedback of your true desires. Trust it. Trust it with ferocious kindness.
When people try to sell you on their framework of the world, ask yourself who does this system forget, who does it harm?
What works for you might not work for other people and vice versa. There is space for an abundance of experiences. Be strong when other people press upon you, they can’t see that abundance yet.
Feelings, in all their tricky shifting landscapes, are meant to be felt. Stay open. Be a cartographer for all that you feel. Chart the topography of your emotions as they rise and fall. There is nothing to cure or fix, you don’t need to excavate your heart, you only need to feel it.
It’s okay to not know, to be uncertain. Sometimes it is uncomfortable, but not knowing is a lush place to rest.
Just as I did in this letter, collect your likes. Not in the digital social strata, but in the real felt experiences of a lifetime. Gather the things that delight you as if they were shells on a beach. Bring them to your mother, I know her well and I promise she will always guide you to see what a unique treasure you’ve found.
When something brings you joy, note the way your body feels. The same is true if something brings you sorrow. Try, with no intention of being perfect, to live as much of life as you can in your body.
The best friends are the ones who’ve been to therapy.
If you find yourself near a fresh body of water, no matter how cold or inconvenient, get in.
Radley, earth is undoubtedly a mess. But mess is where we all come from. I’ve spent a lot of my life forgetting how messy I was when I was young like you. Mess is the source of all creation. My hands were once firm in their dedication to discovery as I dug for roly polys in my mother’s backyard. But trying to fit in on this earth took me away from being okay with my messiness. You are so capable of doing what you came here to do (whatever that may be) exactly as you are.
You are whole and will always be whole. May you return to this letter when life on this earth devastates or disappoints you. May the nooks of these words keep you safe. May your bioluminescent spirit glow long into this life. May you always have a sanctuary.
Aunt Molly
**The parallel structure of this line is crafted after Maggie Smith’s line in Good Bones. “Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine/ in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,/ a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways/ I’ll keep from my children.”
