Table Of ContentA THIRD BIRTHDAY LETTER
FOR MY YOUNGEST DAUGHTER
ALEXANDRA GRAY
An ancient soul in a brand new body.
My saving grace in the darkest of times.
Soft feet, silky skin and a simply divine smile framed by unruly corkscrew curls. It’s what you
surround me with as I try to write your very late 3rd birthday letter. It’s long and as it took me
three years to write, I’m guessing that it will take you three weeks to read.
Although massive in nature by its length, this is less a story and more a collection of memories.
There may be no rhyme or reason to any of this and I wonder if anybody will understand ‐ as it
feels like you must stand in my shoes to see how this particular story goes. It’s choppy and
jumbled as I reach into the past and pull memories out of thin air before like sand, they slip
through my fingers. I can never get more than a handful at a time. A sentence here, a paragraph
there..................in no particular order.
This is the sum of memories written hastily on napkins and haphazardly in the back of books.
It’s the product of balancing you dangerously on my hip with the groceries so I could write the
memory of you on the bag. This is a letter born from late night emails to myself ‐ fragmented
and nonsensical. Barely there, just enough to reawaken not so much a literal or visual memory of
you but more something on the level where souls dwell……..Its only purpose to exist enough to
allow me to relive and re‐tell. I have to go back and be me, so I can see you.
In my soul I am a memory keeper ‐ which I guard with photographs and words. Pictures are
born of the moment, which once gone, so too the opportunity to capture it. Words however, are
born in the heart and easily transcend time.
Written words live forever and will exist for your children’s children long after I am onto another
life...and you of course will be in that one too. You and I have known each other many times
before, and I’ve learned much from you. My soul remembers you on deep levels I am not even
fully aware of. I only know they exist as surely as I know you exist within them. You have given
me so much through our lifetimes. I have collected it, held it close, and am now giving it back to
you.
Maybe one day a thousand years from now I will read about you, in a totally different language
and from a different role in your life, and it will be YOU who taught my great great
grandmother her wisdom ‐ which you learned from your mother and I am now relearning from
you. Therefore I must be specific and teach you well as you have taught me. It’s a cycle of life, love
and learning so I cannot let this story be forgotten or lost in time.
You simply must know how full of grace you are. How enchanting, how irresistible, and what
your three years have done to my 30.
Memories are everything and these are mine of you. Perhaps not in order but all told full speed
and non‐stop as I try to bring your short life back to life so I can re‐live it and re‐love it.
Like wedding cake, I’ve put the memories on ice to freeze for a later time, when the chaos is gone
and I am better able to enjoy.
You see, the first time around…………………. I was a different person.
The first time you lived these things I was a more dead then alive momma battling a post
apocalyptic and deadly form of PPD while trying to survive the horror show that was the slow
and cruel goodbye of my baby sister, your Aunt Patty. I called her Mouse, but she was better
known to all you girls as “Patty Mother ”.
Even as I write this, the grief of simply uttering her name makes the keyboard blurry and hard
to see. However, it’s the heart that writes so the eyes are less important.
Though you never got to know her, your looks are incredibly reminiscent of the little girl I once
knew. The bits and pieces of my baby sister that I see in you are an amazing gift to me. It’s a
treasure hidden among the tragedy. Shades of my little Patty peeking through your smile. An
echo of her in your little nose. The memory of her kept alive thru your mannerisms, to remind
me she really never left………………..Your looks part of her legacy.
Sisters are soul‐mates. Meant to suffer and survive together. Saying goodbye to mine shattered
the already fragile mother I was, scattering any strength I had left. Healing took years, and was
such a life consuming process it demanded almost all of me. It was a battle just to make it t0 the
next day where hope of healing always danced one step ahead. It left me unable to fully enjoy
you and all the little milestone moments the way every mother deserves to.
I may not have been fully aware but like a camera lens, I saw it all and stored it. Though not
always present, I was always recording, and now I am ready to rewind and relive.
Its been three years since you found your way back to me providing the light that guided me
through some of the darkest days of my life. Your mere presence brought sense and beauty to
mounting chaos and unrest. People say …….if your going through hell …….keep going. I say …….
it’s much easier to walk through hell while you hold proof of angels in your arms.
Although well .......you may as well here it from me. Never one to sugar coat things I will just say ‐
you were angel like only in your presence....and not in your appearance. Truth be told you looked
more alien than angel and would have been a great extra in my favorite show………the X files.
To be quite honest the first few days I was not entirely convinced you were mine. You had a very
distinct Asian look on top of the alien features you began with. Your head was odd and your eyes
were uneven. One too large and the other not large enough.
I was unable to even accept the congratulations on your beauty. Every time somebody made a
fuss I’d narrow my eyes and seek the truth behind seemingly automatic words. Unable to hide
my thinking how people are fools…….either lying ones or blind ones...... but either way simply just
fools.
You were ugly as sin and nobody was convincing me otherwise. Something I believe I said to a
startled nurse who confirmed my fears with her hysterical laughter and quick exit.
I would like to blame it on massive grief and fear, combined with drugs and a total lack of sleep,
but the reality is to this day I still think you were born wonky looking. It leaves this particular
momma unable to say all babies are born beautiful, as you my darling are solid proof that this is
not so!
You have of course made up for your early lack of beauty with a ravishing gorgeousness that
mocks me...as if to show me just how wrong I was with the sheer contrast of the stunner you have
turned out to be. Now when people stop me to comment on your beauty, I laugh inside and
think …..yeah NOW she is.
So how do I start to tell you the story of your life?
The entire thing is up in my head swirling like a Kansas tornado, picking up memories of all
sizes and spiting them out for me to try to grab before they blow away. Some so large they slam
into me and I’m left breathless from the impact. Others so small I have to lift large amounts of
debris before I am able to see them. Those are usually the best ones, the unexpected fragments of
your life. Like little parts of a broken mirror that reflect back to me the beauty of your babyhood.
To start with I will say that you are the baby that almost wasn’t. Something I now find so
terrifying it’s hard for me to hold you and think about. You weren’t planned for and I thought I
wasn’t ready for another baby, yet now have realized how badly you were needed. It pains me to
think how much I would have missed and without a doubt I would have known you were absent.
Some part of me would have felt you weren’t here on this plane, but sensed you were somewhere
out there, maybe missing your momma……………It would have been torture.
Life would have been so much less without you in it. I thank the Gods they knew better than I did.
Me who worried so much over my body and them who handed me another large baby.
You are the ultimate gift, of which I’m so grateful , but I wasn't quite so amused in the
beginning. The Doctors…..well they were downright disapproving. Your first sonogram came
with heavy warnings about two C‐sections back to back and how easily we could lose you. I was
told to stop nursing your sister if I wanted to keep you, something that seemed like a sacred
death to me and against Mother Nature herself.
I was forced to switch doctors a few times in my search for somebody who would believe in
YOU....and in letting nature do its job.....something I never entirely found. The warnings came
fast and furiously....but I didn't listen to any of them…………………………….I listened to YOU.
I sensed you very early, and felt you stir before you even had legs to do so with. I knew you were
strong and I knew you came with a story. I knew nursing your sister while growing you would
only strengthen us all and I wanted to be able to form that bond between you early.
In your souls you are twins. There wasn't enough of me to grow you both at the same time, but a
date doesn't change the destiny. You are yin and yang ‐ polar opposites in everything……………..
but not whole without each other.
Where she is the sweetness, you are the strength. You endured much while you grew, as I
endured much as I grew you. Even your name has a story to it….being the baby formerly known
as Teagan. It was only after your birth that Alexandra took the leading role. Now I realize this
was your name all along, and we were too deaf to hear it.
Alexandra carries with it an uncommon strength. It’s a name which warns those who speak it of
the warrior who wear its. You are my daughter, born bold and you descend from a line of
unusually daring and adventurous females. You will know life on intimate level that most don’t
even know exist. I’m certain you will wander the world as I did, seeking out pieces of yourself the
fates have scattered, like clues that lead to the true meaning of life.
Perhaps u will remember Africa the way I do, not from a life lived in this body but from the
many before. Exotic countries will be more than places to you. They will mark chapters in your
life and moments in your timeline. They will grab a hold of your heart and speak to your soul.
Perhaps you will walk past my footprints while your exploring and seeking, with a hunger you
can’t contain for things you can’t explain. Like me, you will probably crave all things unusual,
uncommon and find yourself dissatisfied with anything less than the extraordinary.
You were always an Alexandra……………Anything less, would have fallen short.
Your adventures began with your entrance into this world and I saw your strength before I saw
your face. Every birth is dramatic as nature demands. A rite of passage for both mother and
child. However, most are just a tiny chapter in a much larger book. Your birth …….and the drama
you were born into was bigger than most.
One day you will hear the full story of the insanity that came calling right before your birth, and
directly after. For now I will try to keep this short and foreshadow of deeper, darker details.
You were born Alexandra Gray, in Long Island New York, the day after April Fools, and one full
day after your father was released from another hospital. For weeks leading up to your birth he’d
been deathly ill and his survival uncertain. A deep coma brought on by a massive brain infection
held him in a dark and unnatural slumber. It was such a dire situation, I wasn’t sure you were
going to have a father upon arrival.
Description:You and I have known each other many times before .. expecting her to walk in and exclaim in her very British way “Oh Dear me Sue, I seem to have.
