I don’t remember being more excited about anything as a kid as I was about coming to visit you and Papa at Ridgeway Farm, whether it be for Thanksgiving or just Danielle and I getting dropped off for Nana & Papa’s ‘summer camp.’

There were markers along Co. road 678 signifying that we were close: the little white shoebox church with two symmetrical black doors; the country store with the swinging screen door and a Pepsi mural on one side of the building. I’m certain I remember pickled pigs feet in a jar on the counter though I always opted for candy when we would stop in.

And, I knew we were really close when the car wheels hit the gravel road. I can still close my eyes and see it all pass by the car window in my mind’s eye. There was a giddy excitement characterizing childhood that no longer comes to visit as an adult. Like all of the ‘last times when’, if only I knew the last time I felt that giddy knot in the pit of my stomach, maybe I would’ve enjoyed it more. Maybe I wouldn’t have tried to contain it as much as I did.

The totem pole would welcome us to the entrance of the farm. We would arrive at the ‘white house’ or later at the log cabin that Papa built with his own two hands, furnished with what I recall being almost entirely your handiwork: your quilts, your paintings, Papa’s woodworking… what ensued was pure, simple living and treasured memories I hope I never forget…

We’d start out the days shooting marbles or working those old Kellogg’s sliding tile puzzles I can only assume came in the cereal boxes. You’d take us into Lynchburg to the library to pick up books for our two week stay and I’d always pick up a stack of Archie comic books to read and re-read when I went through them all. We would wile away the hot Virginia afternoons splashing in the pool down the hill and then years later Papa taught me to dive in the pond.

With dinner time coming soon, waterlogged and worn out from swimming, we would come back to the house to help string beans and shuck corn from your garden. You tried to teach me to make the dinner rolls you served with every supper, but I never could quite pick it up. I tried, really I did, but they always turned out more like rocks. So, I would just look forward to having them when you made them, and I could always help. I would help roll out the dough, punch cup size circles out and fold them over to bake into imperfect, soft, buttery deliciousness. What I wouldn’t give for one of those rolls right now. We would have a big country dinner with those rolls around the kitchen table overlooked by framed Norman Rockwell prints and at the end of every meal, Papa would always lick his lips and like clockwork, he would purr, “mmm, good, mama, good.”

After dinner, we would scrape the dinner scraps into a bucket and hop on the back of the 4 wheeler with Papa to feed the pigs. With the sun sinking below the Virginia hills, the fireflies blinking over the fields and the crickets and frogs beginning their evening concert, we would head home to gather around the tv to watch HeeHaw and Papa would make popcorn on the stovetop. I still, to this day, only make popcorn on the stovetop. I’m convinced it tastes better that way.

These are only a smattering of the memories I hold dear in the almost 44 years I’ve been your granddaughter.

You left us today to return home after a life well lived, and I’m closing my eyes to travel down that old co. Rd 678 to visit you, to recapture that childlike excitement and to get a pat-pat hug from my Nana. Save me a dinner roll.

12 years ago at this very moment, I was less than 30 minutes away from meeting my first child.

I spent the entire night in a hotel room in Manteo, NC lying on a leather couch with a hotel towel for a blanket after the hospital discharged me and told me it could be another two weeks.

It was scary and agonizing, and I prayed like I had never prayed before.

After a long, sleepless night and certainty that I would die if this lasted for two more weeks, I strongly insisted that I be taken to the hospital again which may or may not have been accompanied by a slew of expletives.

It was a fairly short drive which couldn’t have taken more than 10 minutes yet it felt like an eternity.

We pulled up to the front door of the emergency room, they made me fill out paperwork (again), put me on the elevator to the birth center, transferred me to a stretcher and the last thing I remember before I met Kaia was the nurse yelling “emergency delivery.”

She was born 7 minutes from the time that we rolled up to the sliding doors of the hospital.

Somewhat figuratively and many parts literally speaking, not much has changed over the last 12 years. It’s been uncharted territory, terrifying at times, maddening, utterly painful, and also a simply beautiful experience for which I am immensely grateful.

Happy birthday to my maddening, painful and simply beautiful first child, Kaia Madeline. You are my heart walking around outside my body.

“There won’t be nothing but big ol’ hearts dancing in our eyes. In spite of ourselves.” – John Prine & Iris Dement

Oh, my heart. Kaia, mailing her letter to Santa. I always thought it was such a sweet gesture that the USPS would send a letter back to the kids.

I don’t remember what was in that letter that day. But, I do remember that it was our first Christmas in Weaverville. I remember that it was one year to the week since we moved to WNC, and we couldn’t afford much. Michael was cooking at the Jack of Hearts, and I had started my virtual assistant business just a few months prior.

That was the year we had a homemade Christmas. I made felt boards with Mr. Potato Heads sewn on them and interchangeable felt accessories. We cut up blocks of wood in all different sizes and painted them. I sewed little mice whose homes were upcycled Altoid containers. Michael made me the most beautiful earring holder out of a repurposed cheese grater and a place to hang my necklaces on an old painted wooden picture frame. (Those remain the favorite gifts I’ve ever received, and we still have many of those gifts 7 years later.)

Since then, we’ve grown as a family, our financial situation has changed and Kaia now knows the secret about Santa, but one thing has never changed…the magic of Christmas.

Whether we had a homemade Christmas, or we were gifting the wishlist of a child we didn’t know or, like last year, we had an experience Key West Christmas with no stockings or material gifts at all, what remains at the core of it all is love, joy and generosity. And, as for me and my house, we choose to believe.

All I ever wanted was you, Daddy.

To show me what you knew and let me learn alongside you when you, yourself, were learning.

To be in my world, even when my world may not have made the most sense to you.

To spend your time with me even when it seemed there was no time to give.

And, to teach me all about love. The kind of love that shows me how to love myself. To respect myself. To love others.

To be an example of the kind of person I want to be.

10 years ago today at this very minute, I was wiling away my last few hours of being unmarried. It was my wedding day, and it was nothing I envisioned it would be. We were juggling a 10 month old…(well, 2, if you consider the fledgling restaurant we opened when Kaia was 4 days old), I was 5 weeks pregnant with Mason and utterly exhausted, and as is my modus operandi, I was overly ambitious in the DIY wedding planning.

I hear, from all appearances, it was beautiful and fun, but, y’all, I was a wreck. My internal state 10 years ago isn’t the point. What I’m getting at it is this…

Life doesn’t always go as planned, and it sure as hell isn’t what it looks like from the outside. As I’ve embraced the idea that expectations are dangerous and quite useless, it’s transformed the way I view my reality.

Ten years of marriage has taught me that reality can be better than expectations. It’s all in the way you choose to see it and create it.

Don’t get me wrong, it ain’t easy. We’ve shown up. We’ve done the work. We’ve endured many, many desperate, gut-wrenching moments when we didn’t know how we would carry on. But, we did. We battled addiction, anxiety and depression. And, we forged on. We were saddled with bankruptcy, and crushing debt. Yet, we marched on. We started completely over with toddlers in a new place with no jobs. Still, we kept climbing. All the while, committing to being better than we were the day before. We created something, when there was nothing.

Our marriage marked the beginning of a better life, one day at a time, every day for the last ten years. Not because it was the catalyst for two kids, a white picket fence and a dog. We had already been there, done that. And, let me tell you, a fence, a dog, and two kids, happiness doesn’t make.

We’ve found a better life through communication, acceptance, forgiveness, self-realization, discord -> resolution, a willingness to show up and do the work and lots of therapy.

I’m so proud of us. We have overcome, and I have faith that we can continue to overcome whatever may lay in our path ahead. We’ll keep climbing.

Thank you for growing with me, Michael Jerome Rivers.

P.S. To everyone who thought we wouldn’t make it this far, we showed you.

I see you little one.

You don’t realize it, but you’re whole and perfect exactly the way you are.

As a matter of fact, the things you resent about yourself are the gifts you have to share with the world.

You’re meant to live out loud and be unapologetically you.

Your story has served you in some capacity for so many years.

You can let go now.

You can rewrite the story.

I forgive you.

I love you.

You are meant to be here.

You’re destined for great things.

Be patient.

You’ll see.

Every time you ask someone how they are in Costa Rica, they respond, “pura vida.”

Literally translated, “pura vida” means pure life, a Costa Rican version of “hakuna matata.”

The term came to Costa Rica by way of a Mexican movie in which the character, despite his continually negative circumstances maintains eternal optimism via the phrase, Pura Vida.

It has now become an ubiquitous, all encompassing term to mean gratitude, a worry free attitude, a general sense of happiness and so much more. But, to even attach definition to those words doesn’t fully convey their gravity.

It’s an attitude, a way of life. It’s as if just through the utterance of the phrase, you’re infused with a touch of optimism and a sense of all is good.

I think we should make it a trend back at home. It’s so much better of a response than, “I’m fine.”

But, I want to make a difference in this world.

You already do, my dear, you already do.