http://www.oxfordamerican.org/item/1187-bramble-road

All I could think: I don’t ever want Jean to be lonely. I want her to know love, and I want her to know giving love. Every day. When she is old enough to understand, that is what we will talk about at bedtime each night. Did you have a good day? Who gave you love? Who did you give love to? Did you feel love today?

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/item/1258-black-jack-jean

How will I teach her to have more good faith than seems wise and yet, simultaneously, that the world is full of veiled motives and blatant, accepted wrongs. That a million shiny sequins are at the front of the line holding sparklers to win her time and attention, and that she will have to look past them. How will I teach her to trust herself and be true, amidst so much noise? I will probably say vapid, motherly things: Jean, turn off the TV. Jean, put down the phone. Jean, do you think we should use technology to speak to each other with cartoon emoticons or should we ask for something more from ourselves? How will I teach my daughter to ask for something more, but more importantly to find something more? Within herself, within the people around her, in every day. I want her to know that the deep spiritual nutrition of living is in nature, in quiet, in joy, in substance, in one-hundred thousand places every day that are not screaming out for our applause. Found not in things that court our lowest common denominators but rather where we discover what good we are capable of. That we are more than consumers, that our experiences require a language more unique than references to popular movies. That pop songs and “likes” are not what we strive to make of our lives. I know, from my own life, that what I want to show her is The Hard Way. A lonely way, sometimes. An often confusing way. Something I still struggle with myself.

On that morning at gate B24 with a hangover in the company of the Viagra ad, the only answer I could come up with is that I will have to teach her by example. Oh perfect. I thought. Hungover mom’s example. But it is the only answer I can ever come up with. I will have to double down on my own courage, I promised silently. But I don’t always know how to do these things myself: when to compromise, when to hold out, how to not take more than you need but how to find enough.