Welcome!
to the sixth edition of Tiny True Stories! If you’re new here, hello, and thank you! I’m so happy to see you. And for those of you who have been with me since I began this newsletter six months ago, thank you thank you thank you. I feel your presence when I write these.
I hope you celebrated Thanksgiving (or didn’t) in a way that felt great to you. We hosted a Friendsgiving and I took maybe two good pictures, none of my own family, and it was loud and chaotic and wonderful.
We are getting ready to host family here for Christmas, but that also means we are not going home to Michigan for Christmas. The holidays are full of whiplash like this. I can’t stop writing about it—the good, the terrible, how they exist together and we just have to hold it.
Which reminds me! Even in a “humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza (which is a horrific phrase—let’s take a brief pause so we can continue killing? Coooooool), Gazans are in the middle of a humanitarian crisis. I do not want to speak for any Jewish folk but it’s hard to imagine that this level of suffering in any way serves those in Israel who have died. Keep calling your representatives. Denounce killing of civilians. Help with humanitarian aid. Follow @heyberna on Instagram for a really helpful to-do list. But as I said to my senator, humanitarian aid is just a band-aid if people keep dying. What’s the endpoint in war? What the hell does “winning” get anyone?
I am still learning how to talk to my daughter about the world. I fail at it all the time. Here’s a story about that.
Today’s Tiny True Story
I genuinely try to write about things other than my daughter, but it turns out that’s the major thing happening to me at the moment. Sometimes I’m tempted to pretend otherwise. I work and also have other interests! But why pretend? That’s some internalized sexist voice about what a female writer “should” be interested in. This is what I’m interested in.
Good, Not Yet
I see the dead squirrel before my daughter does. I’ve been able to brush past dead bugs. All her grandparents are living. We have no pets, no fish or hamsters to practice death on. She is three and a half, and instead of teaching my daughter about death, I have been able to say not yet. But the black squirrel is in the middle of the sidewalk. For a minute I’m worried she will run it over with her scooter. It’s a fall day like a painting, and we are looking up at the leaves, not down at the sidewalk. Each leaf on this tree is green, gold, and red at once, time passing by each vein. For a minute she kicks against the ground to keep going and I think good, not yet.
But then she drags her pink sparkly boot on the sidewalk to slow down. She sees the squirrel. She gets there first. I don’t know if it’s bloody, or if she can see its jewel-bright intestines, a new way of seeing a body.
“Mommy, what is that?” I catch up and thankfully the squirrel is intact, eyes closed, only a little flat. A kind of stillness she has not seen before. Not yet.
“A squirrel,” I answer.
I have learned that she often wants the simple answer. Once a tower of blocks fell and she asked, “Why did that happen?” and I tried to launch into a toddler-friendly explanation of balance and gravity, the way I used to take essay tests—filling up page after page with every idea I could think of until I hoped I eventually got what the teacher wanted, or the way I make so many of my decisions for her, by researching and reading and asking until I can feel like I know a molecule of something; though it never really makes me feel better or smarter it feels safer so I keep doing it; so when my daughter looked at me blankly while I tried to explain the pull of the Earth, instead I stopped and said, “It was just too heavy.” She nodded, and said, “It’s okay, we can just try again.”
Even as a baby she never cried when a toy fell or the blocks tipped over. One of her first words was “Timber!” She doesn’t know this word is used for destruction. For her it’s only a fact of life—things fall. She’s always been able to laugh when something falls, and try again.
I have learned that I’m a coward. I always want to tell her the truth if she asks. I know all parents think this but I think my daughter might be a genius. She wants to understand things, has a memory that shocks me with its breadth and precision. The world is terrible and the world is marvelous; I want to tell her all of it. But instead we move slow, and the world unfolds itself to her like a bloom, petal by terrible, marvelous petal. When she asks, with a bright fear in her eyes, “The train stays on the tracks, right mama?” how can I tell the whole truth? Not yet.
And now we are both standing over the squirrel. The perfect fall breeze eddies the fallen leaves and they say shhhh.
“Mommy, what happened to the squirrel?”
I tell the simple truth.
“He’s dead. His body stopped working.”
She thinks for a minute.
“Maybe he was tired,” she says. Yes, honey, probably. She gets back on her scooter and continues on, singing.
It’s almost winter now and the plants are dying too. When my daughter asks why the leaves fall, I tell her they will grow back in the springtime. With the trees, the truth is a gift.
On our way home my daughter stops to examine the squirrel again. “Maybe he will feel better and get back up in a little bit,” she says. “I think he will,” she says to herself. I’m a coward.
But the leaves do come back every year. Sometimes I hear my beloved dead in the wind, on the radio, in my mind like their bodies never stopped working. What do I know?
“Maybe,” I say.
When we get home, it’s dark. She wants to build Legos with dad. I turn the light on for them, and we all move on to the next thing, lucky to take the light for granted.
Letters of Recommendation
This recipe for the cranberry pie with pecan crumble. My friend said he dreamed about it that night, no brags.
This poem, “What is Home?” by Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, who was recently detained in Israel.
This unhinged baker who makes cakes that twerk. You’re welcome.
Wishing you and yours some light in the next month. Thank you for being one of mine. I can’t wait to see you next year.