Third birthday.

Cable: 42, Level: 66, Light: 3970

For our baby girl Mila on your 3rd birthday.

I still remember watching the Bay Lights light up for the first time from our first apartment in San Francisco. It was just months before you yourself twinkled into being.

They were (and are) gorgeous. We could stand out on our deck to see them. There was also a beautiful unobstructed view from our top floor windows. We could also lean out over the low wall at the end of our dead-end street to see them. Every night as I arrived back home, I’d stop to look at the Bay Bridge shining over the water before going inside. Sometimes the lights thrummed from one end of the bridge to the other like the strings on a harp; sometimes they rippled like fish just under the surface of the Pacific; sometimes they raced back and forth; sometimes they just twinkled; and sometimes, in their first error-prone weeks, they got stuck. But it was always beautiful to watch. It’s one of my fondest memories of San Francisco. Although we are no longer there, my memories of you always will be.

We’ve dedicated a light to you to celebrate your birthday, to support public arts in your city, and just as one more way that you will keep shining forever.

Love,
Mama & Dada

Moving on, and remembering.

Moving on.

It has been a while since my last post. Lots of changes are afoot. I will try to write more about it when I have the time, but the short version of the story is that we are leaving San Francisco -- at least for now -- and relocating to Madrid, Spain for a year. I have a lot of complicated feelings about saying goodbye to San Francisco. We've been here just about four years now. It has been a life-changing four years, many times over, in both good ways and bad. San Francisco made me grow up, beat me up, picked me up, made me strong, made me weak. For better or worse, we're now parting ways.

Remembering.

Since we knew we were leaving the west coast for at least a year, D and I decided to spend our summer vacation in Hawaii, while it's still only a few hours' flight away. Every year on Memorial Day, there is a floating lantern festival in Honolulu to honor lost loved ones. Anyone can participate. So we went, and spent the evening remembering. Here are some photos.

Mila, 

It feels right that we should remember you here in Hawaii. We have been here together before, and it will always remind us of you. You have seen dolphins here, visited green sand beaches here, and swum in the ocean here. 

We miss you and always wonder who you would be today, a big sister to Isla and Schmorgy. You will always be in our hearts, and will always be our little Nuggsy.   

Love and love and love for always, 

Mama and Dada

We'd summoned you.

We'd summoned you out of ourselves, and you were not given a vote. If only for that reason, you deserved all the protection we could muster. [...] I knew then that I must survive for something more than survival's sake. I must survive for you.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between The World And Me

Imbalance.

I still get lots of people asking me if Isla is my first child. It's part of the standard battery of very innocent questions: How old is she? What's her name? How's she sleeping? Is she your first? The experience of raising her is so different from anything I got to experience with Mila that it's not as hard anymore to say "Yes" just to get along with my day, but I still always add the mental qualification: Yes, my first living child. Which is what they mean after all, even if they don't know it, isn't it?

It makes me so sad that we have so little of Mila to remember, especially in light of the incredible new memories we are making with Isla every day. I want to love them equally, but it is impossible to love them in the same way. One I know better and better every day, and one I can never fully know. In one hand I have a mountain; in the other, a grain of sand -- and every day, the disparity grows larger. One doesn't subsume the other, does it? My brain says no, but still I am afraid. I guard the space around my little grain jealously.