Kelly Corrigan - Lift

Dear Georgia and Claire,

Youre both in bed now. Dad, too. I should be sleeping but Im wound up.

First day of schools tomorrow. Bus comes at 7:44 and wont drop you off until after three. We dont usually get downstairs before nine. But tonight, shoes are by the front door and backpacks are zipped. You even laid out your clothes, so we dont have to argue in the morning.

I dont think youll remember tomorrow, or many of the other days weve spent together so far. I only know a handful of stories from before middle school. There was the kiss by the coats in the spring of fifth grade that I pretended was gross. And the time my teacher, who was tall but wore purple heels anyway, asked if anyone knew how to spell chaos and I wanted to raise my hand so badly and be the one who knew something no one else in my class knew but I couldnt because I didnt know. I feel that way still, like I wish I knew more, like I wish I had answers.

And I remember in third grade, I pulled a tiny foil star off Julia Burrs row and put it on mine, so Id have more. I got caught and was taken to see the principal, who had very short hair that looked burnt on the ends. When she started in on me, Mrs. Ford, my teacher, held out her hand and guided me into her lap. I put part of her long necklace in my mouthI was very nervousand she gently took it out so I could concentrate on the principals thoughts about truthfulness. You guys love that story.

Youre always asking me to tell you about making mistakes or getting grounded. Like when I was ten and I tried to get a bug off my dads wind-shield by kicking it, over and over, from the inside, until the glass cracked from top to bottom and side to side. Greenie came back to the car after paying for gas, sliding his billfold into his back pocket, and said, Lovey! What the? We drove home in silence, Greenie shaking his head like hed never met a kid with less sense. Those stories are as clear as stains compared to the everyday stuff like eating ice cream or playing Go Fish or swimming with my mom in Squam Lake, which Ive seen a picture of but cant actually call up inside me. I cant feel the water, or my moms shoulders under my hands, or her neck under my chin, I cant remember how safe and good it must have felt to ride around on her like that.

I heard once that the average person barely knows ten stories from childhood and those are based more on photographs and retellings than memory. So even with all the videos we take, the two boxes of snapshots under my desk, and the 1,276 photos in folders on the computer, youll be lucky to end up with a dozen stories. You wont remember how it started with us, the things that I know about you that you dont even know about yourselves. We wont come back here.

Youll remember middle school and high school, but youll have changed by then. You changing will make me change. That means you wont ever know me as I am right nowthe mother I am tonight and tomorrow, the mother Ive been for the last eight years, every bath and book and birthday party, gone. It wont hit you that youre missing this chapter of our story until you see me push your child on a swing or untangle his jump rope or wave a bee away from his head and think, Is this what she was like with me?

The last time we went to Philly to see your grandparents, Jammy taught you how to play dominos while I checked my e-mail. I listened as she explained the rules in stages, showing you all the ways to score until she was sure you understood. When you bagged your first point, she helped you move your peg up the board, winking and clicking her tongue and saying jokey stuff like By Georgia, I think youve got it .

When I was little, I dont think she winked or clicked or punned.

And my coming-of-age? Imagine one long string of cursing, crying, and lying followed by stomping and slamming, punctuated by the occasional kindness These eggs are good or Is your knee feeling better? Jammy mustve cut those moments into tiny pieces and rationed them to herself; for all she knew, itd be a month until I fed her another morsel of affection.

I dont know when youll read this. Maybe when youre a teenager? No, probably later, when youre on the verge of parenthood and it occurs to you for the first time that someone has been loving you for that long. Maybe (lets hope not) youll read it because somethings happened to one of usmy cancer came back or Dad was reading a text going across the Bay Bridge and cars collidedand you want to piece together what it was like before . No matter when and why this comes to your hands, I want to put down on paper how things started with us.

I always wanted kidsmore than all other things. Not very Harvard Business School of me, I know. There are other things I want to do, big crazy things, like make a movie and build an artists compound and fix my printer. But at night, in the years before I met your dad, when I was talking to a God I wasnt sure I really believed in, I whittled down all my requests to one: children. You.

Greenie has this huge family and I love being inside something that big. I love the noise and hugging and high-fiving and how we tell the same ten stories every time were together and, after that, we tell the same six jokes, all of which have titles, like Precious and Probably and The Sportcoat Joke, which Uncle Dickie delivers with a Scottish accent and a harelip for no reason anyone can give. I remember once in college climbing on-stage with a band. The music was so loud. The bass line came up through the floor into my body. Thats what its like being in a room full of Corrigans.

Kathy is my favorite. Shes one of Uncle Genes seven kids, which I think explains her self-reliance and therapists eye for interpersonal drama. I like her because shes so totally unguarded. Ive always wanted to be like Kathy, and over the years, Ive tried on various parts of her: I mimic her one-sentence e-mails in all lowercase letters, I listen to John Prine and early Bonnie Raitt. I clutter my bookshelves with unframed photographs, old lunch boxes, and homemade art. Shes why I cut my hair short every couple of years and wear bandanas when its too hot to turn on a blow-dryer. I read the books she sends me and the poets she mentions. She introduced me to Rilke, who has this line about how some harmonies can only come from shrieking, and another about how when crystal shatters, it also rings. The Rilke line thats up on my bulletin board is the knowledge of impermanence that haunts our days is their very fragrance. So many true and delicate thoughts that prose cant touch. Promise me youll read him.