The following is a free letter from my weekly newsletter Dear Daughter. If you're considering subscribing, but aren't convinced, this will give you an idea of what to expect. Dear Daughter publishes once weekly, and is sent out on Sundays at midnight GMT.
Dear Daughter,
You had your six-month checkup this week! It’s always so hard watching you get shots. You don’t understand the pain, or why it’s suddenly there. I wish I could tell you in a way you could understand. But for now, I just have to settle for holding you until you feel better.
This time, it took over a day before you felt like yourself. Besides that, this week in the world scared me a little bit. I read a disheartening editorial in the New York Times by David Brooks titled “America is Falling Apart at the Seams” about how teachers are reporting a rise in disruptive behavior, hate crimes have surged and gun purchases have soared. He says the reason for this is growing hostility for Americans from Americans and a diminishment of care and compassion toward one another.
This is not the world I wanted you to live in. I want you to live in a world where most people are good and love wins. But “good” is subjective, isn’t it? At the core, I think not. I think when it comes down to it, “good” is just what happens when people act on their best intentions, and work to see them through. I hope more people are doing this when you’re my age. Of course, this will only happen if people who are my age now spread more love.
While Brooks’ analysis is depressing, it isn’t a death sentence. I believe that with all my heart. I have to, for you. Little pieces of good happen every day. And we need to spread more of that than the bad. In fact, we need to fight for the good.
Just this week, I received a beautifully thought-out, heart-felt letter from a donor who contributed to a scholarship I received while in college. It was in response to a thank-you letter I wrote her in 2019 upon receiving the scholarship. I’m embarrassed to say I hadn’t thought a lot about the letter after sending it, but she had. In her letter, she said she thought about it often.
This, dear daughter, gives me hope.
In order to keep the good going, though, I need to write back. And I will. Because it’s these moments of connection, of taking time out of one’s day to reach out to and appreciate one another, that will keep the bleak reality Brooks wrote about at bay, if just for a little longer.
While I was looking in my Instagram story archive for the Brooks article so I could link it here, I found a poem I shared called “Under Stars” by Tess Gallagher. I shared the poem because it was a favorite of Randy Bolton, the UM theater professor I mentioned in my last letter to you.
He even loaned me a book he had of her poetry, “Amplitude,” because this poem lived in it. He knew I was an English major, and thought I would appreciate it. I did. And tonight, as I sit writing this letter, I do even more.
In one part, because the poem reminds me of him, and he was a great man worth remembering. In another part, because the message of “Under Stars” gives me hope. It’s about the speaker delivering a letter to a mailbox for someone who has stuck with them, but their walk to and from the mailbox connects them so much to the very world they are walking in. So, the poem is about love. Love for another, love for the world, love for the married couple in the house on the way to the mailbox. But, most importantly, I think the poem is about connection.
Randy’s favorite line in the poem, he told me, was the one about the white envelope. Mine is the last:
Again, I am the found one, intimate, returned by all I touch on the way.
The remedy to hostility is connection to all that touches us along the journey of this life. Please remember that.
Til next week! All my love always,
Your mom.
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