Dear Sadie

Well, I've started this letter a few times now and deleted that much and more, so I might as well just begin with what's on my mind:

Your Great Grandma Hazel passed away last week and you and I are still warm from all the hugs we shared in New York over the weekend. I am so very, very glad that Grandma Hazel had a chance to see you while she was able, and I won't ever forget how calm and peaceful you were in the room with her last month. An absolute angel. But that's not what I want to talk about right now.

Someday soon I will tell you all about the strong women in our family -- women who have raised families while building careers (before it was modern), who have sat next to their children to do homework at the dining room table because they knew how important it was to have a college education, who have scrimped and saved and put aside vacations and new clothes and fancy cars so that their children could have a bigger future, who have loved and lost and kept right on living. There will be time enough to tell you about them, but right now I want to tell you about the men.

Because the best example I know of love and devotion and selflessness is your Poppy Howard, and I want you to know that as much as we were grieving for our loss and celebrating Grandma Hazel's life this past weekend, we were also paying tribute to the way Poppy Howard cared for Grandma and his family -- especially the last 17 years.

When I was 11 years old, Grandma Hazel had a stroke. What I remember most about that day and the coming weeks was the back "seat" of our Ford Ranger pick-up truck. There were two little benches that folded out facing each other, and your Uncle Bill and I would squeeze ourselves back there and stare at each other and stare out the window and try to stare ourselves to sleep on the 40-minute drive to Gouverneur every weekend for what felt like forever.

I remember wearing my big, bulky winter jacket and how the drives would start out so, so cold and just as I'd figure out a way to warm myself by bending over at the waist and tightly hugging my legs while pulling them in at the ankles, I'd all of a sudden be sweaty and itchy and dyyyyyyying to stretch my legs.

I remember wishing we didn't have to drive so much, and sleeping soundly all the way back home.

I remember racing your uncle Bill and my cousin Lindsay down to the vending machines at the hospital again and again and the time that Bill got off on the wrong floor and we were running all over trying to find him. And it was so much fun I wished we could just play on the elevators all night and not have to go back to Grandma's hospital room at all.

I remember that I expected Grandma to be able to speak again. I remember hearing the adults talk about this and about recovery and therapy and the doctors and the nurses and the percentages.

And I remember her frustration. Perhaps that is the only vivid memory I have outside my childish ones that is any indication of the seriousness of the situation. I remember Grandma Hazel was so frustrated, she was so mad, she was so exhausted that she couldn't tell anyone anything -- and she had tears in her eyes. I remember walking out of the hospital room then, though I can't recall if I simply wandered or if there was a hand gently pushing me out.

But through this all, Poppy Howard was a rock. He would smile when Lindsay and I begged for vending machine change. He would laugh when Bill raced down the hospital hall to the elevators. He would hug us good-bye and when Grandma was flustered, Grandpa just kept calmly making guesses.

Sadie, right now I don't think too much about who you will be when you are an adult. I just know that you will be happy and you will be beautiful. But I want you to know, right now, before life even starts to make any suggestions of turns or curves -- I expect this from you: That if you choose to have a partner for life, you choose someone who will deserve you. A person who will stand by you through all the traditional marriage vows (like thick, thin, rich, poor, healthy, sick), and then some, and they will do so not because they are expected to, but because they want to be there.

Poppy Howard is that kind of person. For 17 years, he not only stood by Grandma Hazel; he carried her, he lifted her, he dressed her and he fed her. He translated her "wa wa was" and her sweeping hand gestures. He found the TV channel she wanted and he guessed and guessed and guessed until he figured out the birthday she wanted him to remember.

When she was able, he brought her out to weddings and to graduations. And when she wasn't able, he brought the party to the farm house. He held her hand and pushed her chair and when she finally made the move to the nursing home in 2008, he visited her every night at 7 p.m. Every night, Sadie. Every night.

Honey, you won't realize til you're much, much older (because I certainly didn't realize until I was older) how much he sacrificed because he loved her. And it will probably take you an even longer time to realize (I only just realized it this weekend) that none of it was a sacrifice -- because he loved her.

I am not a betting woman. I don't play the lottery and I don't like casinos. But I would put every cent I own on your father's devotion to me. I want you to know this, because I love (and I mean love) that when I go home, I will at some point or another walk into the kitchen for a sandwich and instead find my parents dancing, cheek to cheek. I will roll my eyes and groan, but inside I am smiling because it is one of the happiest moments I know.

I know you are only four months old today, and I don't want time to go any faster than it already is, but I can't wait for you to be old enough to run around the corner and find your daddy and I smooching by the stove, just like your Great Aunt Debbie used to catch Poppy Howard and Grandma Hazel. I hope with all my heart that when the time comes you find someone who will love you like your Daddy loves me. Like your Grandpa loves your Grandma. Like your Poppy Howard loved your Grandma Hazel.

Someone you can dance in the kitchen with forever and ever and ever.

Love,
Mama