Dear Parksie,

I’m writing you this letter at Christmas because Santa came to Mama’s house and brought her a new laptop. Santa rocks hard. One day you will figure out that Santa’s name is “Nana” and I’ll be the one holding you while you cry about that. Although, I will admit there are some upsides to that. Nana dresses better and is less hairy. Santa doesn’t frequent Chico’s as much as Nana.

I think somewhere along the line I neglected to mention that Mama got crazy one day when she was pregnant with you and dropped her laptop, cord side down, on the floor. Seems the good old fashioned Dell (Or, as your Dad called it “the battle field response unit” due to all the food that was encrusted on its screen and the red wine inbetween the keys) that housed everything that Mama has ever written was made before they figured out you shouldn’t route the motherboard of the computer straight into the cord outlet. What’s that you say? Yes, I agree. I can’t believe the retards that ever made computers did that either. Because when you drop the thing cord side down and the cord, understandably, jams into the computer, it will fuck up the entire thing. In fact, it will fuck it up so good it will lose everything you’ve ever written (Yes, this does include eight chapters of Mama’s first book and every column she ever got published). This ultimately resulted in Mama getting on lots of medication and going a little crazy. Mama shortly figured out that writing made her at least half sane. And, well, not really having an accessible outlet to do that resulted in a little crazy going down at the Garrott house from time to time. But, thankfully-after almost a year of catching a computer and internet access when I could-“Santa” fixed all that and Mom’s sitting on a hot little piece of Toshiba Midnight Breeze with a Fusion Finish and a 16 inch screen. One day you will understand that and-if I’ve raised you correctly-you will be just as excited as Mama is.

You turned six months old two weeks ago and now you’re old enough to start housing your own brand of crazy. I can’t begin to tell you how exciting it is to watch this unfold before me. You already have your picadillos and your ideas about how life should work out. Most of these focus on your needs being met immediately and any human within ten feet of you worshipping you like the goddess you believe yourself to be. I will go ahead and readily admit you get this from me. You are your mother-already. Or maybe Mama was just a six-month-old until she was 32. Who knows?

You dislike loud noises and discord and will cry if anyone raises their voice around you. You hate being in a room by yourself and love to stare out of windows and watch trees wave in the wind. The cats can stop you in your tracks and give you a case of the giggles. You smile at everyone. If fact, you smile so much people mention it openly when they’ve been around you-“Does she just smile all the time?” I hasten to tell them that you do lose your shit from time to time…but not a lot…and not without reason-like poop, or needing more sleep, or wishing the New Kids On The Block never got back together. Mostly very important things.

You are, of course,unmentionably beautiful to me. When you smile my skin tingles. I sleep next to you and your smell is heady and comforting. My body recognizes it as “like” and its something I can’t explain with words. I want to kiss you all the time and keep you under my arm. If will could cause your chest to rise and fall you would never stop breathing. Watching you become a “person” is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever experienced.

Its in the way you spread your toes wide and sigh when I take off your socks at the end of a day. Its when I ask you, “Do you want Ba-Ba?” and you actually giggle and say something that sounds like “Yeeeeeh.” Its when you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is prop yourself up on your hands and grin at me like you’ve just won five straight hands of poker and the hooker is on her way to the hotel room. Its in the way you fight naps like a tiger but when you finally give up will put your arms around my neck and lay your head down on my shoulder with a resigned sigh. Its you, kiddo. You’re cooler than shit.

It doesn’t hurt that you cut your first two teeth the day after Thanksgiving (the two bottom center) and when you grin you look a little like a drunken homeless man that’s just found a box of wine and a brand new cardboard box. I’d give you anything for that grin.

You get angry. You get excited. You get happy. You get sad. You get scared. You get sleepy. Most of all, you are just you. And I can’t wait for every day that I get to discover what the rest of “you” is like.

Love you and Merry Christmas,
Mama

P.S. Hopefully letters will get much more frequent now that “The Sheeba” is here.