Dear Amos
Dear Amos,
As the first grandchild on both sides of the family, your existence has made many people’s dreams come true—mine included. You’re almost eight months old, and we’re all still gushing with love, bursting with pride, and riding the high of having beautiful, curious, (now crawling) you center our lives. And as boundless as this love is, it would be dishonest not to admit that it’s also tinged with sadness.
I was twenty when my father died. I’m thirty-one now. It’s hard to conceptualize that I’ve lived over a third of my life without him. Other days, it’s hard to conceptualize that he was ever real at all. Which was kind of like pregnancy. Yes, my body felt alien and huge, but was there really someone living inside of me? It’s the same soft-focused comfort people offered after my dad died. “Now he lives inside of you,” they’d say. I used to wonder, where? At least you kicked.
And then of course, you came out, a tiny, pink, living baby. You were quiet at first, immediately cuddly. I could not believe I’d made you—and birthed you. I could not believe your blue eyes were so big, that you knew how to eat from my breast. There was something so full circle, watching your grandparents hold you, watching them watch me and your dad become parents. We were all witnessing each other’s transformations. All of us, that is, except my father.
With your arrival, and even during my pregnancy, my grief for him has renewed. The wound of my father’s absence has been torn back open, freshly infected. I’ve been robbed yet again. My father never met your dad. He was not at my wedding. He has not read my short stories. And now, most heartbreaking of all, he will never meet you.
I struggle with how to talk about him, especially to you. My father may be dead, but I’d like him to be in your life, to be in mine. I’m just not sure how.
*
The weekend after Thanksgiving, your dad and I took you to pick out your first Christmas tree. My father was especially on my mind--he loved the selection process. He'd pull out each potential tree, twirl it around, assessing for fullness. Eventually, your dad and I settled on a beautiful fir nearly too tall for our ceiling. A pair of high school boys wrapped the tree in netting and tied it to the top of my Toyota Rav 4. I drove home carefully, while you chewed on a rattle, teething.
Your paternal grandmother came over to hold you so we could decorate the tree. We dug through an old plastic box for the multi-colored lights. The box of Christmas decorations had originally belonged to my family. These were the same lights my father had strung up, the same ornaments I’d placed as a child. The wooden saguaro cactuses, the ceramic ballerina dressed in blue, the homemade ones my sisters and I crafted out of tongue depressors.
Once the tree successfully twinkled, we began arranging the ornaments. “Who is this?” Your grandmother asked as I pulled out one that also doubled as a picture frame. I stared at the tiny picture of my young parents’ heads pressed together. My mother’s hair was dark brown, my father’s sandy blonde. “My mom and dad.”
“Look,” your grandmother said, dangling it in front of you. “It’s your Nana and...and ...your grandfather?” She didn’t know what to call my dad. Neither do I.
Your father and I laugh at how the baby boomer generation obsesses over coming up with “cool” grandparent names. I know Cici’s, Bibi’s, MiMi’s, Kay-Kay’s, GiGi’s. My mom chose Nana—which is what I called her mother—while your dad’s parents are PaPa and Mom-Mom. But who is my father?
*
When your birth was approaching, many suggested I name you Wes, after my dad, but I didn’t want to. It felt like too much pressure, somehow unbearably weighty. People often view the dead as saints, and this is especially true with my father, which makes me want to scream. Who are we then remembering, asking you to be namesake to? No one I knew, not really.
And then of course, there’s the singularity of my father, who could never possibly be you, shouldn’t have to be. He was a singer, a guitar player, a foosball champion. He’d stay up all night to smoke his barbequed ribs just right, walk us to the bus stop in his pink robe. He voted Republican, but then cried while watching Obama’s inauguration, so moved that our country had finally elected a Black man to be president. He died in the midst of personal and professional uncertainty—he was only fifty-six when an unexpected stroke took his life.
Naming you after my father never felt right to me, but recently an idea has arrived: I could give my father a name, something for us to call him when talking about him to you. Maybe a name will help me do so.
*
My father’s father passed away years before I was born, just as your grandfather died long before you came along. My sisters and I never knew how to refer to our paternal grandfather, and in fact we almost never talked about him, unless solemnly reflecting on how awful his death must have been for our father. It was just them two together when my grandfather died of a heart attack while scuba diving off the Texas coast. When my father had his stroke, I was the first to arrive at the hospital. He asked me to squeeze his hand, and I did, but he could not feel it. Half his body had gone paralyzed.
“Squeeze again,” he’d said, panicked.
“Daddy, I am.”
His death was traumatic and painful—one day I will tell you more, if you want to know—but what I can’t take is for my father to become a hushed memory because of it. He is dead, I cannot change that. But we can give him a name. We can talk about him, imperfections and all.
The father who would ask for all my theatre performance dates in advance so he could plan his work travel around them. The same man who would pout when he felt he wasn’t getting enough attention, who would stay up way too late playing Star Wars games, hogging the family computer. The same father who teared up in every movie—including Legally Blonde—the father who beat all of my boyfriends at ping-pong, who came right away when I accidentally ran over a kitten.
The man who made lists of his goals, anxious about the future, who wrote notes to himself, saying, “it’s not so bad, relax.” I still miss the sound of his calloused feet sweeping across the stained concrete floor, how he drank soy milk before it was trendy.
My father loved music, and he’s passed this on to me. The years before he died, I’d come home from college and play him the bands I’d recently discovered. Mountain Goats and Wilco and Feist. We’d drive up and down the hills of Park Road Four, near where he’s buried now, and he’d tell me to crank the music. He’d listen to each song closely, offer up his thoughts. I made him mixed C.D.s, and he made me feel cool. I wish I could thank him for singing all of those Willie Nelson and Hank Williams songs throughout my childhood. For buying me that Neil Young album the Christmas before he died.
Though my dad may be gone, he’s not done giving. You will be my father’s grandson because you too will know the words to Harvest Moon, to Jambalaya, to Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. You’re already showing an inclination toward music. You love your drums, your music class. You smile when we sing to you. Even in the womb, you kicked like crazy at an Amos Lee concert, which helped solidify our name choice for you. I can’t wait to see all the ways you prove to be my father’s grandson. I also can’t wait to bear witness to the unfolding of your own unique self. I hope to make you feel seen and accepted, to encourage you to chase what lights you up, just as my father did for me.
He would have adored you, by the way. I sometimes picture him holding you as a newborn in his hands, his wide eyes staring back at yours. I still dream of him often. I cannot make him exist again for you, but I can show you how he was real for me. I can talk about him. We can give him a name, all for you. Yes, a name will not bring him back, but it might help him not disappear.
“That’s Nana and Grand-Wes,” I’ll answer next time someone asks about his picture. “That’s Amos’ grandfather."
Maybe, someday, the answer will come from you.
With love and awe at your existence,
Mom
