Letters to Dannica: Joy, Curiosity, and Life Unlived (Month 10)

We did a Memorial Day barbecue with a fire pit and s‘mores to give you and Luc some semblance of normalcy. 

 

In truth, I miss many things about our pre-pandemic life. You’ve never gotten to know how it feels like to sit on a swing or go down a slide. You haven’t been on an airplane to to marvel at the sights and smells of somewhere far away from home. Your first birthday is coming up, and we won’t be able to give you the big fanfare celebration traditional in our culture. I know you won’t remember back to this age when you’ve grown enough to retain memory, but I still mourn these experiences being lost to you.

In carefree fashion, you enjoy sleeping the day away, are fascinated by the softness of flower petals, and marvel at the way sunlight gets filtered through our blinds and dances with shadows. 

You examine any object you could get your hands on, and you are interested in repetitive gestures like Daddy’s coffee grinder. 

You like watching Odin; you especially revel in tossing your finger foods down from your high chair and watching him gobble it up. 

You learn more gestures, like rotating your hand for “no more,” shaking your head “no,” and pushing food away when you’ve had enough. You develop a fondness for bread and get a kick out of playing peek-a-boo. 

You love Luc just about as much as you love picking a fight with him over toys, and you take turns sleeping on each other’s heads, clamoring for the upper hand.

We start reaping the results of the labors in our garden: we harvest the potatoes that we planted at the start of shelter-in-place, and we watch our baby plants grow tall. The summer flowers bloom as we continue to cook and bake to pass the time. 

As the world gradually reopens, we take little strolls around downtown Willow Glen and Santana Row so you could marvel at small joys like water fountains. 

 

We cannot give you much else these days but hope that you will retain your infant optimism, and that nothing can dampen the joy in your heart and your sense of curiosity for the world.

Letters to Dannica: Self-Feeding, Balance-Standing, Hair, and Hiiii! (Month 9)

You’ve officially entered their double-digits, my girl. Your appetite for solid food has quite picked up, and you’ve transitioned to chunkier textures. Your favorites are still orange-colored food such as sweet potatoes, Japanese and garnet yams, butternut squash, and carrots. 

Though you don’t have Luc’s precociousness with words, you are very observant, watching what we do, and how Luc plays. Then you’d quietly crawl up when he’s abandoned his post and try to mimic him, everything from pretend-cooking, working the busy-box activities, and playing the toy xylophone.

You are cutting two more top front teeth for a total of six. You’ve developed the pincer grip and could feed yourself finger foods. 

 You have mastered pulling up to stand and are working on letting go your hands to practice balancing. 

You wave bye-bye when prompted and make this silly face by pulling down your upper lip when you try to say, “Hiiii!” In true lockdown fashion, your hair has gotten quite long and unruly, and Mama has been experimenting with a few up-do’s.

Entering our third month sheltering-in-place, in May we observed Daddy’s birthday, Mother’s Day, and your sister Thi’s would’ve-been second birthday. 

The neighbors put on a live concert for us, and you had a fun evening grooving to the music. 

We also took a drive up the hills near where we live to observe the springtime scenery.

Camellias in Bloom

“White camellias, winter blooms
When summer comes I will think of you”

--“Sorrowfree,” Kate Campbell

 Dear Thi,

Last summer, your father and I meandered around the garden section of Home Depot when I decided I wanted to plant a camellia in your honor, so that I would have something living to tend to and keep at home when I couldn’t visit your gravesite. We planted the camellia in a faux wood barrel, and over the winter that just passed, the leaves became droopy and sparse. 

I was worried that something we intended to commemorate you would grow sick and die, but your father fed it with fertilizer stakes, coffee grounds, corn husks, and egg shells, replenishing the soil with magnesium and nutrients. Early this spring at the beginning of February, the camellia bloomed for the first time, showcasing a delicately soft swirl of dark pink petals. 

The leaves became dark green and glossy. Every morning, I would defrost a bag of frozen breastmilk in a large cup of water for Dannica to start her day, and I’d take out the cup to water the camellia afterward. It made me part-believe that I was feeding you as well. 

Around this time, I was in conversation with a new Technical Publications manager at a company called Rivian. I had started to get back into the swing of work at Byton after my maternity leave with Dannica. There were some exciting projects rolling out and a slightly different team dynamic to get used to as old team members shifted to different companies and new team members on-boarded. I had missed the camaraderie with my colleagues. I wasn’t looking for a new job since my days already felt so full with work, pumping milk, meal-planning for the family, and cooking purees for Dannica as she started solids. I thought I’d entertain the interview process to keep my skills sharp, and a sense of curiosity also compelled me to meet the people who work for Rivian. After a round of phone interviews, I was invited onsite. 

The Rivian office in San Jose is located closer to home, on an industrial street lined with many other companies. It has the feel of dot-com San Jose before the big bust, as companies clamored for real estate to draw workers to the ever-busy and dynamic Silicon Valley with its promises of dreams of making it big. Rivian sat at the center of a bunch of complexes, a bit tucked away and more difficult to find. As I neared the front door of the building, I was surprised to see a tiny camellia bush with similar dark-pink blooms like the one I had planted for you. 

A strange hunch washed over me, the same one I had when I scoped out the Lam Research facility, my first real job outside of college and my entry into a corporate, technical writing career. As soon as I saw Lam’s triangular logo that made me think of a mountain with horizontal slashes raked into its side, I had a feeling I’d get hired even before I interviewed. 

In this way, this tiny, innocuous, seemingly neglected little camellia bush was placed perfectly for me, like a sign to embark on my next professional adventure. It was an interesting time for a job change in general since everyone had started to shelter in place (SIP) in mid-March for the Coronavirus pandemic, and it felt especially risky since your father was also ending his employment at Satellite Health Care to start at TriNet. As we took family walks to stretch our legs during SIP, I noticed camellias in bloom across the neighborhood, jade leaves glossy against the sun, clusters of pink and red flowers thickly coloring the bushes. They, and you, are everywhere, following me along my journey, reassuring me that things would be ok. 

So, past the interview conversations and strategic business moves, I based a major career decision on a hunch, a gut feeling, a sign. I know it sounds superstitious to base things on a sign, me being such a fundamental believer of science and logic. But taking the new job opportunity turned out to be right in more ways than one. It has given me a fresh adventure, change, and the chance to meet amazing new people while continuing to financially support my family and enriching my knowledge in the technical writing trade. 

Dear Thi, I used to be so afraid of changes; something like signing on for a new job kept me awake for nights on end. The last time I did this, I had just lost you, and subsequently decided to leave my job of a dozen years. I had survived the pain of your loss; not much else could hurt me more. That turned out to be a wonderful opportunity, a fun ride. It was equally strange that the offer presented itself to me when I was not even looking, whereas in the past, I had job-hunted in earnest, but with no leads. I can’t help but feel like you are this higher being watching out for me, taking care of me as I would have done for you, guiding me to paths that hold my best interest. 

It is May 13^th, the week after Mother’s Day weekend, the day you would have been due. You would have turned two years old. I think of you especially today, and hold you in my heart always. I am entering my third month of working from home, and I now sit at the dining room table, gazing out the window where the spring-green camellia leaves are peeking through. It uncharacteristically rained this mid-May, and this evening, we are gifted with a double rainbow, followed by a brilliant sunset that shaded the clouds a blushing pink. 

As I step outside to enjoy the remnants of the day, I have a strong feeling, an intuition, that you've come on your would've-been birthday to visit me.

Thanks for watching out for Mama, Baby Girl. I see you, too.

Letters to Dannica: Pulling to Stand & Emerging Personality (Month 8)

We have now been sheltering in place for a month due to COVID-19. We pass our time by taking family walks, cooking, baking, eating. You’ve gotten to try quite the spectrum of fruits and veggies in your purées, and Mommy will transition you to chunkier textures soon. You are up for trying anything new, and your appetite has quite increased in the last month. You’ve now sprouted two top front teeth, four in total.

 You’ve learned to clap and could spend 20 minutes marveling at the mechanics of your hand movements. You could now pull up to stand by yourself and enjoy standing and playing.

You can lower back down to crawling position as well, and with these new skills, you can hardly stay still, even when we put you to sleep. You end up sprawled on us or across pillows at awkward ankles before passing out, as if you were in the middle of scaling Mount Everest.

Your In & Out Day has passed this month, so now you’ve spent as much time on the outside as you did incubating in Mommy.

We find your personality emerging: you are physical, fearless, determined, curious.

You like to have fun and know how to win people over with a smile, but your brother Luc has the more good-natured sense of humor in the family as it takes more to make you laugh.

A Bouquet from Luc: for Dadda, Mama, and Dannica

 These days, our laundry and dishes always get on top of us, and we miss going adventuring on trips beyond our neighborhood. Mommy wishes she could take you on your first flight to somewhere fun so that you could continue learning and exploring. We are thankful for our health, for our jobs. But part of me is already dreading the inevitable commute back into the office, being away from you 9+ hours during the weekdays, rushing to get you through your meals and routine instead of having time to enjoy these little family moments.

Easter Sunday 2020

For now, I’ll hold you close and watch you grow.

Letters to Dannica: The Last of Our Outings (Month 7)

I never would have thought that the last few outings we had in the past weeks—visiting Google’s lawn sculptures, going to the train show at the fairgrounds, attending a friend’s red egg party, and touring Mommy’s and Daddy’s alma mater—would be our last taste of freedom for a while.

Visiting Google's Lawn Sculptures

Train Show at the Fairgrounds

Red Egg Party

Visiting Mommy's & Daddy's Alma Mater

You were born in what is turning out to be a historic year, with a COVID19 pandemic sweeping through the world, and with a recent county mandate for families to “shelter in place,” essentially being locked down. The economy is plummeting, schools have closed, and many people are told to work from home, with others losing their jobs entirely. 

Amidst all this, you are continuing to grow, picking up an incredible amount of skills in the past month. You are cutting two bottom front teeth and are chewing everything you could get your hands on, with your favorite being Daddy’s meaty hands.

You roll over like a pro and can sit up straight all by yourself.

You can now crawl forward a little better instead of your backward scooch. You reach out your hands to your choice person when you want to be picked up. You show a huge interest in wanting to pull up to standing, and can do it with a little assistance from us. Your favorite purées so far are pumpkin and pear. Luc makes you laugh a lot, but in true little sister fashion, you are starting to annoy him by getting your hands on all his favorite books and toys that he’d rather keep to himself.

It feels like the world is on fire, with people rushing about, scared, anxious, panic-shopping, hoarding food and supplies.

Grocery Shopping During the COVID-19 Pandemic - Empty Shelves

 They now pass each other on the streets and stay a distance away; the hustling and bustling, traffic-congested Bay Area, hub of the Silicon Valley, has largely become a ghost town with its residents hunkering down. It feels uncertain and surreal, but you are too young to sense and know any of this. You keep doing you, growing along, gifting us freely with smiles and baby chuckles.

You remind me of what a treasure children are, how much joy and hope they give us, at a time like this. And despite the world being on fire, it feels right—it still feels like it will be okay—with you in it.