Six years ago, I wrote these words on my first weekend home together as a family of five:
“We brought Hope home with us on Saturday.”
Indeed.
It is true that Ashkenazi Jews (Jews of of central and eastern european descent) name for the deceased and Dylan and Ruby follow in that tradition. Dylan is named in honor of Phil’s Aunt Dora and Ruby for my mother Ronni. But Hope was to be my hat tip to her Sephardic (middle eastern) heritage. She is named for the living. We honored her great grandmother Helen and her grandfather Lewis and her grandmother Linda to come up with Hope Leigh.
Right from the start, Hope was a symbol of life.
I think I might have mentioned this before, but my c-section with her was one for the record books. It started routine, but turned into a nearly three hour ordeal, requiring a separate procedure to deal with old old scar tissue from my previous sections before they could even begin to unravel her from my body. A c section is a strange process on a good day. You are numb from the waist down. Your body is working overtime, but there is a giant sheet and a lot of heavy narcotics preventing you from being fully aware of just how hard you are working. And when it comes time to actually have the baby the doctor tells you will feel some tugging. Not pain. Just tugging. What a strange metaphor for parenthood it really is. The way you are kind of numb but so viscerally alive, the way you are so keenly aware that a part of you is being pulled ever so gently away from you. That this is exactly how it should be and so it is, right from the start.
I was watching videos of that day this morning and I forgot just how utterly wrecked physically I looked after those three hours. I’m holding her and she is calm and I’m calm. I’m of course heavily drugged in the video but so calm. None of it matters. We are here and holding each other. I’m grateful. It’s funny really how busy and chaotic life can be sometimes that we forget how easily, how essentially, all that we ever really have to do is hold each other up. Right from the beginning when I could barely pick my own head up off that gurney, there she was, holding me up. Reminding me that we chose her name for lots of reasons, but mostly because we wanted a living reminder every single day that so much of life is just the part where we dream and believe in the possibility of better days.
Hope is every emotion ever that you might have experienced happening all at the same time walking around existing at once in the body of a kindergartener. One of our most favorite things about her is the way she greets everything - I’m telling you EVERYTHING - with an unprecedented amount of enthusiasm. Hope we are going to the car wash! We are going to eat cake! We are going to watch Paw Patrol! You are going to inherit your sister’s old clothes! She is a constant reminder to live and try for no other reason than that’s what we’re doing here in the first place. What is life if not a constant fight to stay awake - alert to every single opportunity to love, to smile, to sing, to celebrate. In every way, she is the very human embodiment of Hope.
I bought her a card today that said that when I am with her it feels like being close to the sun and it does. This is how it felt on that freezing cold January morning when I finally held her close to me. She was light and warmth. We held each other as if it was our only job (and actually that really ever is our only job) and made me feel like it would all be alright.
So today you are six.
You love My Little Pony and pretending to be a popstar and telling corny jokes and guacamole.
To me, to everyone who knows you, you are an actual ball of walking sunshine.
What a gift it is to us to stand in your warmth.
Happy birthday Hopie.
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