Anna

Having a baby is a strange thing. We go into it thinking about a cuddly figure entirely dependent upon us for its survival. It is “ours,” something that will make our lives complete. We rarely think about the long gradual process of turning over our child’s life from ours to theirs, from it being our dream to being his or her dream.

The first time I felt the weight of this is when Anna started going to school. Suddenly she was putting her own names on her assignments, doing her own work, and creating her own permanent record. She had started becoming her own person.

Up to that point, Jamie and I were her teachers. I remember teaching her vocabulary. She was good at repeating words. I would point to the sky and say, “Moon!”  She would say “Mooon!”  I would say “car” or “chair” or “truck” and she would point to it and repeat it. (The “tr” in truck would come out more like an “f.”)

As I drove with her in the car seat, I would say “red light stop!” and “green light go!” and she would repeat it until she learned what it meant.

I remember her first completely original sentence. Jamie was holding her and she wanted down. So she cobbled this sentence together: “Get the baby outta here!”

Anna had a strong will, and in many ways still does. (When Anna was small, Jamie even bought a book titled The Strong-Willed Child.) She was—and is—fiercely independent. We had to hold her tightly in our arms, because as an infant if she saw something she wanted, she simply dove for it. She demanded our attention. If we put her down, she would immediately run out of the room. Then one day she actually sat and played by herself for 20 minutes. We held our breaths and rejoiced.

When Anna was born, a friend custom sewed two Raggedy Ann dolls for her. They were her “Raggys.”  She loved one until the face and appendages came off. Then she did the same to the second. Jamie mended them until they became unmendable. She tried sewing a new Raggy, but Anna rejected it. We still have the two original Raggys in a shadow box hanging in the hall outside my office. One of them has a face redrawn on it and the head is sewn directly onto the legs.

When Anna was a baby, Jamie wanted her to like our cats, so she would take Anna’s hand and pet the cat. It worked. Anna grew to love our pets. She took our cat Gidgett when she left home, and now has her own menagerie of six cats, four dogs, and a horse. She would buy t-shirts with animals on them, wear them well after she outgrew them, and refuse to get rid of them. As a teen, she bred finches.

Whenever we lost a pet, Anna took it particularly hard. She would hyperventilate. She had to learn the hard way that having a pet means watching it die.

She loved watching two VCR tapes in particular: Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day; and 101 Dalmatians. Sometimes we would attend a birthday party, and after a while we’d notice that most of the children at the party were crawling around pretending to be Dalmatians.

Anna loved spending time with me. When she was young, my time with the family was limited. I was running a tax-related business, and from Thanksgiving until Valentine’s Day I practically lived at the office. Jamie would often take the kids to extended family in Mississippi for Christmas because I was too busy to go. For this reason, I believe Anna and Molly in particular craved my time and attention. Andrew was a bit too young to remember.

Like all my children, Anna is smart, and she was the most academically oriented. She always looked to achieve.

I bought a telescope and we’d look at the sky together. Molly and Andrew looked through the scope and then moved on, but Anna was fascinated. We started going to star parties together, standing out in fields in the dark looking at the sky alongside a bunch of mostly middle-aged men. I think she loved it because she got to spend time with me as much as any other reason.

Always the achiever, she went to the University of Virginia and majored in Aerospace Engineering and Astronomy. Originally she was majoring in Astrophysics rather than Astronomy. She wanted to change majors, but saw it as some sort of personal failure. She called me to talk about it, and I asked if she would ever use what she was learning in Astrophysics. She said that if she had to do Astrophysics for a living she might as well shoot herself. So I finally convinced her to change majors.

She’s sometimes prone to this kind of hyperbolic language. She often says that if she ever gets pregnant she would “throw herself down the stairs.” We don’t expect grandchildren anytime soon.

Shortly after she left for college, we were talking face-to-face, and she asked me if I was mad at her. The question took me aback. I assured her that I wasn’t the least bit angry. But I don’t know if I really took the time to truly understand where she was coming from. I’d have to guess that it was because I didn’t call her very often once she left for college, whereas Jamie would stay in touch quite often. She asked a very grown-up question and I could have used it to more vulnerably discuss our relationship.

I felt a nagging sense of shame about not keeping in touch very well with any of my children. I hope they understand that it’s difficult to for me to call just to chat. I do much better talking to people when the topic is something that really matters. They still call me when they want advice. Still, it’s kind of like saying “I love you.” Yes, my family knows I love them, and it’s still nice to hear it from me more often.

Speaking of which: I rarely told my family I loved them when my children were young. It felt excruciatingly vulnerable. This doesn’t make a lot of sense, yet I think many people know what that feels like.

After I started my personal growth journey, I started saying “I love you” to my kids. By this time, Anna was about 14. Whenever I told her I loved her, she would say “Uh-huh.” I guess it felt vulnerable to her too. After a while it became easy for both of us, as it did with Molly and Andrew.

Right about that time, it also dawned on me that I only had a few short years before Anna left home. (I had yet to ponder that I would lose all three of my children in quick succession, but that time would come!) I can remember listening to the song “Butterfly Kisses” and weeping. When my children were born, it seemed like I would have them forever. Turns out it was such a brief period.

We did the college tour thing and she fell in love with the University of Virginia. It was so far away—much farther than the schools Molly and Andrew would pick. And she didn’t know a single person there. When we dropped her off to college, it truly felt as if we were abandoning her.

Her freshman year I invited her on a ski trip and told her she could invite a friend. So she called me and asked, “Uh… can my friend be male?”

And so it is that I was the first in the family to meet Matt. Anna wasn’t sure how she felt about Matt then, but Matt knew exactly how he felt about Anna. It took a while, even after the ski trip, but eventually they started dating. Then it took a while after that before she would admit it to us.

Anna and Matt got married right after graduation. They live in Maryland now and Anna isn’t afraid to tell everyone how much she adores him.

Anna is spirited and ambitious. After being hired as a civilian for the Navy, she still took time to earn her master’s degree in engineering at the University of Maryland.

Anna knows how to dream. She has eclectic interests. For instance, she recently started knitting small stuffed animals. She loves lab work, so she now works at a lab where chemistry would be more useful than the degrees she has. Even though she’s worked in engineering for seven years, she’s seriously looking at working in a zoo. She’s also looked at creating various inventions for horse care (controlled through an app!) and has considered getting into horse nutrition.  Matt wants to be an entrepreneur even more fervently, and has test-flown several ideas.

Anna is enthusiastic. She would much rather be busy than bored. When things seem “stuck” to her, she gets depressed.

Anna, I love you with all my heart. I taught you from a young age to be like me. I hope that’s more of a blessing than a curse for you. I am proud of you, and the person you have become. You are no longer ours, but your mom and I can take a little credit for the amazing person you have become.