The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”
Muriel Rukeyser, from “The Speed of Darkness”

When my son, now on the edge of 22, graduated from high school four years ago, I wanted to gift him a different set of life luggage. I wanted it to be something he might carry throughout this life and into the generations beyond. As an enthusiast who was into music, sports, theatre, youth leadership and scouting in equal measure, he was the kind of young man who had attracted a remarkable set of mentors.

And so an idea was born in the form of compiling an edited anthology series of tributes and wisdom stories. These books would become, or so I hoped, written treasures of every epoch of his life that he could then keep on his bookshelf and share with his grandkids one fine day.

To date, he has received two such anthologies – the high school and the college editions. It seemed the perfect legacy gift to capture life stories and snippets about his essence and spirit, and more to the point, document how others were touched by his unique ways of being and doing.

The first question everyone asked after I presented him the first edition four years ago was if I would be doing the same for our daughter. My intuition told me this gift would not land with her in quite the same way. She’s infinitely more private and prefers less fanfare, pomp and circumstance, which is a sad irony, given that her mother is a celebrant who likes to mark any and every occasion with ceremony.

I sat with the question a while and two years ago, landed upon my legacy gift idea for her. I decided that my present to her would be an epistolary one. Beginning when she left for college, I would be gifting her letters from Mom each month going forth in life. Some, like the first one she received a little over a week ago, shall be longish letters and others, like this next month, just shorter postcards. Most will be accompanied by a small gift or token of some sort. But all shall bear written record and illuminate what’s up for her in her life as viewed and reflected back through the lens of my motherly witnessing. So in this way, I hope these letters might stack up, either in juxtapose or compliment, poignantly alongside her own personal journals through the years.

My first letter to her, for example, apart from being an exercise in apologetics (as in, sorry if this seems like a copycat to the movie Lady Bird – I promise, I thought of it way before the movie came out!, and/or, sorry these letters are not quite the plane ticket to Europe kind of gift you might have been hoping for), revealed my heartfelt wish that we always stay connected and close. To that end, I wrapped up a copy of the picture book, The Invisible String, and included a silk satchel with a piece of red and white string so that she would have a tangible and visible reminder of how, as mother and daughter, we will always have a cord of love between us that can never be severed.

It’s a tricky deal, this business of parenting and letting loose our young adults in the digital age of social media. So much of the our relationship with our birdlings who have flown the nest is now comprised of text messages, Facebook Messenger strings, and the odd Facetime chat.

I wanted my legacy gifts to transcend the ages and to be artifacts that are equal parts throwback and pay forward. His will consist of a series of books that will take up real estate upon a bookshelf. Or perhaps one day, they will be books that find themselves in a storage box in a dusty attic somewhere, to be newly discovered by a future generations of Schmidts. Hers will be a formidable collection of letters and other written ephemera that will inhabit a collection of shoeboxes or perhaps even a vintage suitcase upon a high closet bookshelf.

At the heart of both of these Legacy of Love gifts is my singular intention for my children to know they were seen, heard and celebrated – in her case, more exclusively by me, and in his case, communally. And, of course, at a subliminal level, I want the written word itself to be able to re-communicate through the ages long after I’m gone.

The nature of being human is that we are ever-evolving creatures. Our relationship with and perceptions of our parents, thus, is like a multi-faceted diamond. It is something that we have, hold, carry, study, marvel at, and continue to make meaning from. I should like if these gifts might be as equally illuminating as a diamond held up to the light, and that they might reveal aspects of our relationship and my love for each of them a long ever after I am in and of this realm.

Parenting is the ultimate trip, to be continued. While I welcome this empty-nesthood juncture to be able to reclaim a selfhood that is strictly me, unfettered by utility, servitude or society’s perceptions of the role(s) I play, I am also aware of how a new dispensation of parenting has arrived. I will not be content to rest upon past laurels or fall into a kind of false complacency. As I step into my own midlife and beyond years of early elderhood, I will be demanding of myself that I up my parental ante a notch in order to more fully become the kind of hub-and-spoke mother my adult offspring desire me to be. I wish to meet and greet them with open arms wherever they’re at in life.

I can’t writely nor ritely assert if these lifelong gifts will grow upon them or be received favorably throughout the years. I have to simply live the uneasy and unconditional questions these projects proffer me and rise to the continual and vested challenge of wholeheartedly showing up to the page in the gifting of them. Those are the cyclical terms of endearment and nature of agape that such a contract invites:

To: Them
Endless Love Always: Mom

PS – The great joy of my life is that I get to be your Mom. <3