Of course I'm thrilled and proud beyond measure that this glorious young woman, at the threshold of adulthood, has indeed crossed that threshold and stepped confidently into the sunlight of that new stage of life.
She's part of that powerful generation of young people whom I have no doubt will save, and change forever, the world they've inherited. It needs saving, and it needs changing most of all. This is a generation for whom issues of the environment, of racial equality and empowerment, and issues of LGBTQ equality and empowerment, are not "goals," but actual starting points.
Things that my generation strove to actualize, they grew up already aware of. If they didn't necessarily take them for granted, they knew right from wrong, and they know the importance of righting wrongs. This gives them tremendous power and I have no doubt in my mind that they'll wield that power in the most responsible way, and that they're going to change everything that needs to be changed.
And yet, here I am, at 2:00 a.m. on her birthday morning, replaying memories over and over in my mind, among them the most cherished memories of my life.
I'm gently haunted in particular by the memory of how her tiny hand fit into mine when she was very small and we walked together—in parks, along roads, through the woods up north. We walked together a great deal. The hand grew, and the girl grew, but that particular memory is one I hold close.
I loathe clichés, both as a writer and as a human being, but the question Where did all these years go? seems an inevitable one tonight. Where did they go?
Well, to living, of of course. That's where years go.
Memories are patchwork, and when you've made enough of them, you begin to stitch them together. Sometimes you don't realize how luxurious a quilt you've made until nights like tonight arrive. And when they come, what a Kate-quilt I have. The patches aren't ordered in a chronological or sequential way. Instead, they come into their design based on vividness and colour.
Here's just one patch, for instance: Kate's tenderness and her gentleness—towards dogs, towards other children, towards beloved adults, including her two godfathers. Brian and I have a framed photo on the mantelpiece of Kate, at two or three, brushing our late yellow Labrador Harper's paws with a pink doll brush while Harper, entirely in her thrall, watches, fascinated.
Here's another: her athletic fearlessness—skimming over the waves up at the lake behind her father's boat, wet blonde hair flying behind her, laughing into the sun against the hard blue August sky, the embodiment of Ontario summer.
Still other patches: Kate giving a talk about LGBTQ rights to her class in, what, grade eight? Grade nine? My immense and overwhelming pride in her upon hearing that it had been well received by her classmates and the teacher, thinking Of course it was well received—she's brilliant and she has a social conscience and she's not even sixteen yet.
And others still: Kate taking up long-distance canoeing with a vengeance, joining the line of a family tradition that spans several generations—a very Canadian tradition at that. Kate running. Kate swimming. Kate skiing. Kate baking, Kate reading, Kate exploring the possibilities of her own life in discussions with Uncle Brian—her other godfather—about careers and politics.
Reading to Kate before bedtime on the nights I babysat; her eyelids fluttering and growing heavy in the moments before the book was put away and light was turned off.
Kate painting a canoe paddle at camp as a gift for Brian and I five years ago, as a gift for our anniversary, blazoned with the legend "Thirty Years Of Love."
The memories fall like snowflakes, all of a pattern but each one exquisitely unique.
And yet, even as I run my mind along the soft surface of this quilt of patchwork memories, all I can think of is how many others there are, and that even if I listed those others, I'd only be conscious of how many I'd missed.
Kate's parents are two of the people I love the most in the world, full stop.
They gave us an incredible gift many, many years ago: they made Brian and I members of their family. With no children of our own, we were invited to participate in the miracle of Kate and her brother Michael, my namesake, literally from birth. We were invited to love and be loved by those two children (neither of whom are children as of this writing) and to watch them grow in to the forces of nature they now are.
Our lives have been shaped and enriched by that love. We are who we are today in part because of it.
On this, the early morning of Tuesday, July 14th, 2020, my goddaughter, who is probably asleep, is legally an adult. That is a phrase that will naturally mean more to her than it does to me at this point. That's as it should be—I remember the feeling very well from my own eighteenth birthday: a sense that nothing had changed from the day before, but, also, that everything had changed.
But what's really changed is this: a brave, brilliant, fearless young woman is about to boldly stride into her own life and into the world. She'll be taking everything she has been, and everything she is now, with her.
The possibilities are literally limitless.
I've wracked my brain for hours trying to sort out my feelings, because this is all so intoxicatingly bittersweet.
Don't get me wrong—it's absolutely sweet. But time carries weight, and to deny that weight is to deny how we experience memory itself. And still, even with an ocean of pre-fab birthday platitudes at my disposal for moments like this, I can't even imagine what to say to her besides Happy Birthday.
Or else, I could say this: I could thank her for the glorious mosaic of the years spent watching her reach this moment. I could tell her that she's extraordinary, and that I believe she'll live an important life, and that I believe that she, and women like her, will change the world. I could tell her that I'm prouder of her than she could even dream, and that she has been a source of inspiration since the first moment I held her in my arms, and that she is even more of one today.
I could tell her how much I wish I could be with her today, and how bitterly I resent the degree to which COVID-19 has made travel impossible, denying us the chance to celebrate this milestone with her in person.
And I could tell her that one of the reasons I can afford to dream of the greatness she'll achieve, and the love and joy she'll find in the years to come, is that I can still feel that tiny, perfect warm hand in mine.
I can feel it tonight, as I write this. I'll feel it tomorrow. I'll feel it forever.
