Dear Robert,
We have history. We have boxes and bags, cartons and more boxes. Document and statements. Canceled checks and paid bills. Tattered dustrags that used to be clothes we wore when we dated. Christmas presents rarely used.
These boxes are full of tears, smiles, decisions, and accomplishments. When did it all happen? Where have I been? All I wanted to do was straighten up and throw out a few things but instead I find myself perusing our past and making room for our future. Surrounded by pieces of strapping tape and underneath these box labels are so many reasons to say "I'm sorry", "I can't believe we did that!", "You're the neatest guy I've ever known."; so many reasons to celebrate, endeavor, and hold you closer.
These aren't just statements of accounts paid-in-full. These are life receipts that don't read of the prices really paid: the gauntlet of seventeen professionals before our daughter was diagnosed with Hyperactivity Disorder... things pawned to keep the car from being repossessed... the "flu" that turned out to be our "uh-oh" baby.
There are so many letters from too many deployments. Millions of words, some I only now read for the first time. How did I miss it when you wrote "I can't imagine not having you in my life. You are my fantasy and my reality."? Was I that preoccupied with school conferences and the busted water heater?
Look at this, honey. Paper covered in glitter, string hanging from it, tiny clothes' pins hanging from that. The kids were four and five. They made jewelry from nothing and laid it on our pillows to surprise us. Here are some Mother's Day cards Hallmark could never compete with. They pressed so hard with the crayon you can just imagine their little tongues sticking out the sides of their mouths, genuinely concentrating on the next carefully chosen word... "I lov you mor thin all my toys." Where are those little people now?
I can't believe we still have these tickets to our first Marine Corps ball. I stepped on my gown early in the evening. You said I looked stunning so the rip didn't matter. It was cold in that decorated airplane hangar. You set aside your dislike of dancing and warmed me during a slow song. We had friends, a night out, and it almost lasted forever.
These hundreds of photographs are proof that our guilt over not spending enough time with the kids was silly. Here's Amelia at two, sneaking into the fridge for more cheese slices. This one is blurry because we were all laughing so hard at the milk coming out of my nose. There's a four-year-old Therese singing the Marine Corps Hymn for her turn at saying grace over dinner. That night you said you'd have given anything for a video camera, but you know you can still hear her when you close your eyes.
Here's one I haven't thought about in some time...your promotion to Staff Sergeant. Eight months pregnant, my belly got in the way of my pinning on your chevron. In my nervousness, it snapped out of my hand and landed on the collar of the guy next to you who was being promoted to Sergeant. This one is from our road trip to Wichita in '90. While there, your squadron called you off leave before you had even checked in from your year in Okinawa because Kuwait had been invaded. Once home, you packed your gear and, because of delays, we said good-bye for the last time eight days in a row. On the way back from Wichita we played the alphabet game and I almost pulled over in shock when, for the letter P, our five-year-old Abram said "preposterous". A fitting choice, given the circumstances of the trip home.
These pictures, papers, pieces and parts... it all makes me sit slowly and breathe deep. I had no idea what I was getting into when I married you and it's a good thing. Who knew "in sickness" meant every child having chicken pox at the same time and one of them twice? Or that "for poorer" meant the Marine Corps underpaying us entire paychecks several pay periods in a row?
I don't regret saying "I do". I regret not saying it to you more often. Amid what I mistook for the mere rubble of our lives together, I commit to what I thought I already had and this time, a little more specifically... to you, to us, to these little people, to fewer trips to Wal-Mart and more after dinner walks.
I'm going to go ahead and throw out a few things. I'm going to repack and put the boxes away but this time more gently, with care. I never knew what we had was so precious, so fragile. From now on, I'll heed "this end up".
Love, Diana

A tornado warning had just been issued for the Kansas plains when I held my baby just five hours old, brought to me because her endless shrieking kept the other babies in the nursery awake. She calmed only in my arms looking out the window where the lightning could force closed her deepest blue eyes and the thunder could muffle my lullaby.
When she was two years old I could no longer bear the guttural crying, gasping, and shaking another minute. Recently settled on the east coast, the doctors were as vague and indifferent about the cause as they were in the Midwest. It just couldn't be "colic" anymore. I refused to believe I was "a bad mother". I wouldn't accept that she was "just an unhappy child". In the background the radio crackled. She threw herself to the floor. Hurricane Gloria had arrived. With a convulsively screaming child in tow, I stepped out into the pouring rain. I cuddled her close in an attempt to sedate her mounting frustrations. She helplessly gulped the pure forces of wind and gaped in awe of its pressure against her face. She blinked wildly against driving rain and wouldn't turn away. Her vision danced compulsively from lightning show to lightning show as if she knew where each would strike next. Thunder filled the air and then her throat, not like an anguished cry, now rather like an answer. The storm called to her and her to it. When wind gave in to breeze, she cooed. When lightning powdered behind clouds she lay her head on my shoulder. When finally thunder rumbled distant she succumbed to sleep. Her storm slumbers were deep, if not disturbingly long for one who, to this day, has never slept through the night. I often lay my ear to her chest and am comforted by the steady thunder of her soul.
Eight years later and in the Mojave, she clings to digital recordings of thunderstorms like the heartbroken whose lover has gone out to sea. This rare and cloudy evening, the high desert winds have blown in something seen only too long ago. She turns on a dime in skates never meant to do so and takes in a deep breath. Her eyes canvass and then pierce the landscape for the source. She leaves the smooth sidewalk and heads over rocks, sand and twisted desert plants. Her arms heave to keep her balance as her body leans for speed. She collapses on a mound of dirt we made grassy for just such an occasion (miracle?). I wait in the distance and watch, having sensed not the thunder, but my living barometer on the move.
She sits up, arms holding legs brought to her chest. She rocks, agitated; her muscles tense around her eyes, watching intently as the clouds roll over each other, her lips moving with no sound. She is speaking with, not to, the impending energies. Her hands clench and unclench, an attempt to wait patiently. She doesn't reach to grasp, rather she waits to be grasped. But it is not a grasp she anticipates. It is an embrace.
A first gust gently lifts her face and flutters her eyes. A stronger gust brings her breath then takes it away, wrapping her in weightlessness. Her long blonde hair whips around her throat and shoulders yet there is no sting. Her expression becomes rested and peaceful. She is warmed, as if by fire. She is comforted, as if by the quilting weight of the wind. The rain is pelting but infrequent. I bring our blanket, soft on one side, plastic on the other, and we huddle as if shelter did not sit but thirty feet away. Cracks of thunder lean her head against my shoulder and her face remains deliberately unshielded. As so often before in the olden days of her new youth her eyes dance from light to light, her body shivers and trembles as if absorbing the ions whirling through the air. She lets the now driving rain close her eyes, making her use her other senses to see the storm. She moans, sighs, and coos a language all her own, a gift from the sky when she was just five hours old. The storm rages overhead, often turning us slightly, perhaps away from a harm. She coos and the clouds rumble like a lioness' purr. She sighs and the lightning careens across the sky. She moans and the thunder responds in kind. I witness two living, breathing, moving energies composing what few have ever felt, what no other understands. She believes in the god of the sky. She believes she came from the clouds. She yearns to be home and is soothed only when her family comes to visit. They stayed long and she slept into the night, huddled by her earthly mother and our blanket tent.

At six years old she was diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder. She isn't attention-deficit. She is attention abundant. The world is hers to take in and she does so to ridiculous points of heightened exhaustion; reality for her being that all things, sights, sounds, textures and tastes came at once throughout any given day, leaving the fittest of sleeps to decipher and assimilate all that has been experienced and perceived. Awake, she wants and needs something bigger, stronger, brighter, and louder than her always oncoming world. She's craved and often dangerously sought out the uncontained violence and chaos of a raging thunderstorm to outpace the still unchecked mayhem boiling up inside of her.
As a young mother, I prayed for peace and quiet. As a person, I prayed for help. I can do no more for her than for myself. I have the same disorder. She will not grow out of this, as is the common misconception. When an ADHD child grows up, they can become disorganized and unable to finish one task (job) before starting another. Raising this child so much like myself has often ignited a tinderbox trap of anxieties. My only defense has been to remember what I felt as a child, what worked, what didn't, and to read, call, visit, and re-visit every available resource on the subject. The best resource I've found is my daughter.
The first time I lay eyes on her she stole my heart and I haven't seen it since. She races me for it everyday and I only hear it beating in the distance of her unending gait. I no longer fret as once I did that like all else she touches it would cease to be (the same?). Instead I have learned much about myself, letting the uncertainties fall where they may. I am stronger. I am compassionate. I have looked fear ( fear of being different, of not fitting in, of others shunning my invisible disability) dead in her face and come away en-courage-d.
I continue to run the gauntlet. I'm only 34 but I feel older. My body feels worn and my mind is often exhausted. My heart is often heavy and my soul often sighs. Oh, but not for her, where would I be? Richer? Less encumbered? Maybe. But pity the poor me that wasn't blessed with her birth.
Like a relentless personal fitness trainer she pinpointed and carved hollow my every character flaw, my every weakness. She didn't build patience from the hollows of impatience. She crafted creative diversion . She didn't create tolerance from the empty shell of intolerance. She sculptured acceptance. From the caverns of grief for my own lost childhood she molded a soul of my own. Anger was hurled past rage and came resting in the warmth of calm. From my loathing of others she wrung out compassion and an appreciation for diversity. She clawed away self-hatred and trickled me full with self-appreciation.
Hers was not a willing student and our ongoing battles of will stand as testament to my resistance. She was surely too innocent and naive to know. Yet she broke from a bedtime embrace, daring me to follow (chase?) my fears, my dreams, and my self into the night to become realized.
A child, a little child, a bouncing-off-the-walls-and-furniture-and-breaking-so-much-in-her-path child did all this for me; and in so doing realigned my world in a way I didn't know could be. My baby, my toddler, my grade-schooler has done this for me, taught me what isn't taught, took me to see what isn't seen.
Posh to the teenage horror stories. I stand thirsty for the challenge, anticipating the grip, steeled for the next lesson. Whilst warned of her impending adolescence my eye twinkles back at the forecasters for I'm not the one who will employ her, sell her a home, marry her or become her mother-in-law. Without benefit of her arduous regime lo these past years it is the world, not I, that she will take by storm.