Dear Luciana,

I broke a promise to Mommy.

Actually, I don’t think I promised this to her. This was for me.

Three years of pretending Mommy’s version of Donna Lewis’s song was the only version. Three years of stinky toes and yummy bananas and runny nose, take your medicine. Three years of never once Googling what the song actually says.

Then yesterday on Mother’s Day. Yes, it was actually Mother’s Day. We’re in the car with your abuelos. You’re in your car seat. Abuela is up front. I’m driving, and the song comes on the radio.

I could have change it. I didn’t. Reaching for the dial to skip a Donna Lewis song on Mother’s Day because I’ve spent three years pretending the real chorus doesn’t exist would have been the weirdest possible move. Try explaining that one to your abuelos. “Hey, can we turn this off, I’m protecting a fictional version of your dead daughter’s improvised lyrics.”

So I sat there. And I HEARD it. For the first time in my entire life, I actually listened.

The real chorus is about being everywhere. About being closer together. About promising to never go away. The song Mommy hijacked for your toes is a song someone wrote about a person who swears they’ll always be there.

Mommy picked THAT song. Of all the songs in the world she could have sung over you every morning, she picked the one that turned out to be a goodbye letter she didn’t know she was writing.

I don’t think she knew. Mommy wasn’t planning anything. She was bouncing you around the nursery making up nonsense about bananas. She’d say the universe knew. I’d call it a coincidence. The compromise is that I keep my mouth shut if you want to find some cosmic meaning.

Mother’s Day sucks. But it’s almost cliche to say that.

I keep waiting for them to stop sucking. They probably won’t. They’re not getting smaller. I’m getting better at carrying them around. Different thing entirely.

Maybe holidays will stop sucking by the time I’m in some assisted living facility getting yelled at by a nurse for not eating my pudding.

Hopefully you’ll be the one feeding me the pudding. I promise to be less cranky if that is the case.

I’m not going to start singing the real lyrics. Mommy’s version is still the only version. But now I know what she was singing over. Somehow that makes it more hers, not less. Like she took a song about someone promising forever and turned it into a song about your toes.

It’s a little poetic that Mommy is the one actually doing the forever part.

Very, very, very, little.

I’ll keep getting through the holidays. You’ll keep getting older. The song will keep ambushing me in random cars and grocery stores at the worst possible times.

And I’ll keep choosing stinky toes.

Besitos,

Daddy