letters to my daughter

Catnip for 6 Year Olds

/ Daddy

Dear Vanessa,

This is proof that Luciana got your genes. She is such an extrovert. We were at the indoor playground and she becomes friends with literally everyone. I swear she is catnip for 6 year olds.

She had been playing with this one kid for over an hour when they wanted to go play in the big part of the playground. The 6 year old asked me if she could take her on her own.

Immediately my insides started to retract into a tiny ball of anxiety.

Luciana is about to turn three. I had all the exit doors blocked. What’s the worst that can happen? She goes play by herself with a random friend. For the first time ever.

Don’t tell me the answer.

They were gone for maybe 10 minutes. It felt like 10 years.

She came back. No bruises. Still happy. Pretty sure she hadn’t licked the floor or anything like that. Yay?

Boooooooooo!

Where is the stop clock? When you died she could only crawl backwards. Now she has made more friends in one day than I have in the past decade.

You’d be proud.

Besitos,

Michael

My Favorite Line In The Book

/ Daddy

The following contains spoilers from the book.

Dear Reader,

My favorite line in the book is actually the last line in the book. This is actually a spoiler. Which is also weird to say about a grief memoir. My wife isn’t coming back from the dead. She isn’t a vampire. But the last line is really the emotional coda of the entire book, so if you care about that sort of thing, don’t read ahead.

The first letter I write to Luciana is about a panic attack after I forget her Mommy’s favorite flower. I do end up remembering it, and I write:

Your Mommy’s favorite flower was pink peonies.

Yay, I finally remembered, now what do I win? Existential dread.

The last letter in the entire book is a letter to Luciana when she is fifteen years old, in the future.

The last line in the entire book is:

Mommy’s favorite flower is pink peonies. I remembered.

With only a minor hint of existential dread.

The grammar is on purpose. When I first lost Vanessa, I talked about her in the past tense. But her favorite flower will always be pink peonies, no matter how long she has been gone.

Also, if you look at the cover of the book, there is a pink peony on both the front and the back cover. For that exact reason.

Besitos,

Michael

The Night I Didn’t Care If You Cried

/ Daddy

Dear Luciana,

Every night when Mommy and I went to sleep, I would turn on a fan and have it blast in my face while she slept under a pile of blankets. I’m never cold. In fact, Mommy always called me her personal heater. The night after Mommy died, I had never been so cold in my entire life. I buried myself under a mountain of blankets that felt like they weighed a thousand pounds, my teeth chattering so hard I thought they’d crack. One wrapped around each leg. Rocking back and forth. My body hanging half off the bed.

But that was only temporary. Every few minutes I would flip the pillow to the cool side, but there was no cool side left. I was sweating through the pillowcase, soaking through three different t-shirts. I put on the ceiling fan and the stand-up fan. Both blasted arctic air while my body burned like I didn’t even have skin.

I was surrounded by the entire world, suffocating in my room. Friends downstairs, family inside the hallway. Everyone on top of me, and I never felt so far away from a living soul.

My brother slept in my room that night, and a lot of the following nights. My siblings would switch off. Everyone made sure I was sleeping okay. I wasn’t. They made sure I ate. I didn’t.

The heat was from the rage of never seeing Mommy again; the cold was from the isolation I knew would be my life going forward. They took turns pummeling me into nothing. That spiral would continue, never as intense as that first night.

I slept in our bed, surrounded by her absence. The indent where Mommy should have been still held the shape of her body. Her nightstand with her Bible still open to the day before she died. It was one of those Bibles that had a prayer for every day of the year. Its thin pages had her fingerprints still on them. I couldn’t look at it. I couldn’t close it. The book stayed unmoved for weeks.

My phone pinged every few minutes.

Delete.

Delete.

Delete.

I put it on vibrate. I couldn’t handle whatever people thought they should say to make this better.

Bzzz.

Bzzz.

Bzzz.

The phone was getting dangerously close to being thrown into the toilet. I put it on silent and left it that way.

Time had no meaning. Hours went by, and the clock next to my bed would lie to me.

8:01.

8:14.

8:16.

7:52.

I slept and moved around, and talked and existed. But there was no order to it. It was just a blob of out-of-body existence. I was never there. I wasn’t with Mommy, either, in case you were wondering. I was alone.

I will always be alone.

Did I say anything to you that night? Did I notice if you were crying in your crib while I stared at ceiling fans? Did I even care?

At my darkest moment, was I strong and thinking of you and your needs?

No.

All that mattered was the next breath. Not for me, I didn’t care about me. I was staying alive for everyone watching. Your abuelos had lost their only child. My family circled me like worried guards. People were checking on me every hour. At that time, I didn’t want to survive. Not for me, or even, and this destroys me to write, for you.

I don’t know who I will be as a daddy when you read this. Will I be a good daddy? Did we get through the tough times? It didn’t start out that way. When you needed me the most. I was a black hole. But somewhere in the wreckage of my brain, there was a tiny smidgen of a glimmer that I needed to be healthy for you. I wasn’t. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I knew I needed to be.

Who checked on you that night? Who fed you when you were hungry? Who held you close when you needed attention? I don’t remember. But someone must have. The house overflowed with people making sure you stayed alive. You were somewhere in that house, nine months old, needing everything.

Everyone switched shifts, watching me evaporate while you played, while you cried, while you ate.

The house was never quiet. I became the center of the universe at the exact time I wanted the opposite. Someone was always awake, lurking in the hallway. Someone was always making sure the fridge was full. I had never had so much food in my house, none of which I could force down my throat. All of these loving people became my minimum-security prison.

That first night I was jealous of Mommy. If you had told me I could switch places with her, I would have agreed instantly. I would have done anything to feel nothing.

The ten-minute intervals of sleep were little help. At least during the nightmares my body stopped burning. Waking up meant the burning, and Mommy still being dead.

That first night wasn’t about being your daddy. It wasn’t about grief or loss or any of the words people use to make death sound manageable. It was about my body rejecting a world where Mommy didn’t exist. While everyone was making sure I didn’t follow her wherever she’d gone.

The next day, I would have to pretend to be human. That night, I just had to not disappear completely.

Besitos, 

Daddy