Dear Sofia,
Today you are seven. Seven! The sun is shining bright, it is a beautiful Spring Day.
"You picked a good day to be born," I said to you. "I just wanted to get out," you retort.
Your father and I can't help but smile to each other remembering the fact that you tried to come out a mere four months early. And we held you off for three months.
You were four weeks early, after a harrowing pregnancy and birth. Each year on this day, I remember it in detail.
In any case, you picked a beautiful time of year to arrive to us.
Today we will go to the race track for your Hawaiian Go-Kart party. You get to wear a birthday lei (which is just a regular lei) and together we will pick up your Hawaiian Go-Kart cake which was most amusing to discuss with the bakery. "You want a what?" "Umm, a Go-Kart cake, you know with a racetrack and cars with aqua and purple and peach and green Hawaiian flowers that match this napkin, please?" All this accompanied by a big smile from both of us to make it all seem very normal.
"I wonder what it's actually going to look like when we pick it up, mommy." Yeah, me too.
You have, like every other year, planned this whole thing. You asked your whole family to get involved in the cooking, from mantequaditos to merenguitos to the little sandwiches that my grandmother makes for every party. We're going to have a little bit of Puerto Rico inside a suburban Go-Kart place with a sprinkle of Hawaiian design, just for kicks.
The reason I haven't written here since December is that I have been working on a project for you.
Turning seven is a big deal. Seven is a sacred number: 7 chakras, 7 sacraments, 7 levels of the tree of life, 7 cardinal sins, 7 gifts of the holy spirit-- just to name a few.
In yoga, we learn that 7 minutes is an energy cycle, and that every 7 years we go through intense shifts, both physically and emotionally.
And, quite simply, it just feels like you're not quite my baby anymore.
"Will you still call me your baby when I'm 30?" you asked me as we left the bakery.
"Yes my love. Always always always."
The deal is that before the age of 7 you are a child--completely free, completely one with the whole, truly yourself, beautiful and bright and overflowing with light.
And after 7, life has had time to impose on you: war, hunger, injustice, violence. You understand these things now. They don't make sense (I hope they never do) but you understand them as part of life.
And just the other day, you spent an hour brushing your hair. "I want my hair to look pretty."
It's always been pretty. It will always be pretty. But now, you're aware of how others perceive it.
Right before that, you ask me, "Why would a man beat up another man?"
And I just want to say, "No!"
In December, I decided that I wanted to document this time. So for 86 days, starting on Jan 1, every morning at dawn, I have written to you short letters.
Basically I took the little glimmers of light that have guided my path and tried to put them together for you.
Like pebbles that glow in the dark, helping guide your way.
I have felt deep emotions over the past few days. A mixture of mourning your "childhood," of re- mourning the loss of mine, and of the deep knowing that I can write enough glowing pebbles to fill the whole ocean--but at the end of the day, you will have to get tangled up and unravel it all by yourself.
What can a mother do but just breathe, and design Hawaiian Go-Kart cakes?
And point to the moon.
But it's your choice to look up and see.
It's a choice we all have, even though sometimes we are determined to stare at our own feet.
Look up, look down, look all around.
And keep this beautiful child alive, no matter what your chronological age may be.
Completely free, completely one with the whole, truly yourself, beautiful and bright and overflowing with light.
Now, let's party.
Love, Ma
