I hope whatever happens, whatever I can’t imagine that you may face, that you will continue to seek light.

Sent on
June 3, 2016
by
Carolyn Norr
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Dear Lalo,

Writing to you about climate change is like writing a fish a memo about water.

What solace could be more trite than one offered from green and wild back yard with fruit dripping from the trees, a time of toast and butter, a time and place where desperation flits, almost unseen, at the browning edges of things, to a time I have never known, a time you live in, a time you may know horror. To tell you, we knew it was coming? To tell you, I’m sorry. I couldn’t…thanks, I imagine you saying. Thanks a lot, mama.

To tell you that I love you, completely and absolutely, that your arrival made me understand in a new way what we have to loose? I think you know that. Oh jeez, mama, you might say.

To me it seems you have railed against the pain of the world before you could possibly have had any rational understanding of what it was composed of. Was it my own love for you, or the way you clung to me, needed me, wailed in fear when I left, that taught me how we are connected? I would move mountains to protect you from your own terror. But I mean that metaphorically. There is only so much real mountain moving one person can do.

So I try to teach you to welcome what sweeps over you. I know you will fight for the miraculousness of life. I know I will fight for that too, with everything I have. I know you will love. I hope you will carry joy. I hope whatever happens, whatever I can’t imagine that you may face, that you will continue to seek light, to not punish yourself but rather to taste sweetness wherever you may find it. In a glint of sunlight, a roly poly bug, a swallow of water. I hope your love for all will be vast and unshakeable, a home you can return to no matter what is lost.

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