a letter to the new baby

My new baby,

You will never know how happy we are that you are here today. We love you deeply-- even if you are only with us today. We pray that we have unending time to love you even deeper still. 

We thank God for the promise and gift of new life and pray fervently that we get to hold you, our tiny miracle, in our arms next May.

4 weeks

All our love,

b + c + m

Eight plus

My maternal grandparents gave birth to nine children, five girls and four boys, between 1940 and 1954. On the days (and nights) that are hard to parent my little girl, I think of Nanny scrubbing dirty cloth diapers by hand after waking from another sleepless night for more than a decade, preparing meals and cleaning laundry for nearly a dozen people each day, and all the other joys and frustrations that make up each day as a parent. 

I try to imagine her sorrow after losing her first-born son only three months after meeting him during a penicillin shortage in World War II; my imaginings stop short of the horror of burying a child and returning home to an empty basinet. I try to imagine all of my aunts and uncles as loud, funny, opinionated children moving several times across the country, and the world, as army brats. I've heard the story recounted several times of how she brought over her oldest five children (all seven-years-old and below) across the atlantic on a military ship by herself to meet my grandfather who was working in Germany after the war. Each night after lulling all of the children to sleep, she stayed up to clean and polish each child's shoes because she did not want anyone to pity her or her beloved children. How did she parent with the patience and grace that seem synonymous with her name?

Nanny slipped away quietly in her sleep when I was just a kindergartener. I remember the smell of her three-bedroom home which still held onto the markings and memories of my mom's childhood. I remember the clothes line in the back yard, the outdated kitchen still without a dishwasher, the pretty trinkets on the little table next to her chair, and the antique wooden toys that entertained my aunts and uncles and still fascinated me and my brother. But those are the only details that my 5-year-old mind saved for me. 

My grandfather passed away before he got to walk his youngest daughter, my mom, down the aisle and my grandmother passed away before I could store away her gentleness, compassion, and sacrifice. But my grandparent's legacy of goodness, faithfulness, and joy expound and multiply in the faces and works of their eight children and their spouses, their 25 grandchildren, 33 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-granddaughter. Every few years we gather again to laugh, pray, and remember together.

With almost 80 Gahans these days, we decided to color-coordinate by family.

The sisters put on this same song and dance at every family follies night (and really any other time they get a chance).

All of the cousins circa 1995?

My talented cousin, Jenny Watts, snapped the rest of these photos at our family reunion this summer. 

All our love,

B + C + M

The Months of May: August

It's 28 months of May! 

In the past few months Mary Allison moved into her first house and survived two weeks without a working refrigerator or air conditioner, foul sewage spewing all over the basement, and the incredibly dramatic bird excavation of 2016. With all major issues resolved (for now), she has reaped the benefits of home ownership, too-- plenty of space to run and play inside and out, kind neighbors with huge gardens and berries to share, hot summer days jumping through sprinklers and cool mornings of side-walk chalk. She splashed through the Chesapeake Bay on Memorial Day, wore her "favorite flamingo swimsuit" for a day at the beach, dyed her face blue with heaping spoonfuls of blueberry pie on July 4th, visited the ER for the first time after nearly knocking out her front teeth, and finally met her entire 80-person Gahan family at our reunion in the Smokey Mountains. She started falling asleep by herself in her own room and even slept through an entire night...once. (Huge eye roll.) She joins the rest of the girls on the planet with a fascination for Queen Elsa and the rest of the Frozen cast, loves Play-Doh, trains, and puzzles, and, of course, her baby dolls. She dances wildly, adamantly refuses to give up "mama milk," turns everything into a nursery rhyme, and screams out letters and numbers everywhere she goes. Every day she continues to grow more and more into a little Brigid. Lord, help us.

All our love,

b + c + m