Hello, Loves.
2016 seems very very far away from you all. Though you each come to mind every single day in one way or another, I've all but ceased recording the conversations and thoughts that stream thru my cells. I don't know why exactly. They certainly don't do much good just cycling and re-cycling through my being. But I've been hesitant for the last year to write anything to you here at all. Hesitant to write anything to you anywhere, even in private pen/paper pages.
Some of it probably leans toward shame. You see, even when I miss you most, I no longer actually wish you each were here. In fact, I'm relieved in so many ways that you are not. This world is not kind though your father and I continue to seek and express kindness as much as we can. But looking in my work and life at the cross sections of grief and social (in)justice more intensely in this past year than I probably have in two decades...well, it's ugly out here.
I'm so glad you aren't here to have to make sense of it. I'm so glad you aren't here to inadvertently become the target of some hopped up hate from ... wherever it comes from... I'm so glad you aren't here to have to figure out how to ask the hard questions, how to live with no answers, how to make sense of white violence while still being in relationship with your white mother. I'm relieved that you are free. I am looking forward to that freedom myself one day because this bs is too much.
My love for you never ceases. I do see you in many reflections here that make me smile or pine for some wistful something, to be sure. I still love adding your names to various places so those signifiers are heard or seen -- even if the people on the receiving end don't and won't really know the context of you. It's like you are my secret brigade.
I love you, little troopers. Hope wherever you are, whatever you are up to, that it is nothing like this insanity here. May you have peace and love and some fun. Wherever you are.
Love,
Momma
