Dear Kori Jane,

Exactly four years ago this week, Leap Day 2020, in King County Washington, the first US death from Covid-19 was reported. The reality of what was unfolding in Seattle had not yet hit us down here in Houston. Hundreds of thousands of Houstonians were still gathering daily for the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Our family’s calendars were still chock-full of church, school, and work commitments- not to mention chess tournaments, UIL competitions, babysitting jobs, SAT Prep, dance classes, birthday parties, and theatre auditions and rehearsals. And most importantly, our hearts and minds were fixed on the much-anticipated school-sponsored spring break trip to London! How could we have known that what was happening in the lives of strangers living way up there in the Pacific Northwest would inevitably change our lives forever? 

Even after international flights began being canceled, it still didn’t occur to us that our once-in-a-lifetime trip to London, which I had been invited to help chaperone, would not go on as planned. That is until Spring Break started a few days earlier than expected and even the invincible rodeo shut down. Before we knew it, not only was London canceled, but the whole world was canceled due to this unprecedented worldwide pandemic. These last four years feel like forever and a flash all at the same time. And now that another Leap Year is here, it is just as hard for me to remember life before March 2020, as it is for me to imagine what March 2028 might hold in store. Four years can change everything- even all the things I never thought would ever change- even my own heart.

Of course, you’ll never forget how many times everything changed in your four years of high school as an unusual number of “unprecedented events” occurred. I remember as a student and again as a teacher how much I treasured occasional bad weather days. Sometimes a rare snow day, but more likely a threat of flash floods or the need to prep for a hurricane. Never in all my four and a half decades of living in this great city, either as a student, teacher, or parent, has school been shut down as often or for as many days as it was during your four years of high school.

It was your very first week of high school when I woke you early telling you to throw your most prized possessions onto the highest shelf of your closet and then fill a trash bag with a few necessities. You thought I was kidding until you ran to the stairwell and saw water had already risen to the fifth step of our home. Hurricane Harvey made an unwelcome appearance delivering 50 inches of rain on our city. We were rescued by neighbors in backyard canoes and inflatable rafts, and in the end, had 6 feet of water in our home for fourteen days. Weeks of school were canceled as we scrambled to find a place to live and then borrowed cars, clothes, toiletries, backpacks, school supplies, and even beds. They called it a 1000-year flood, and apparently, we are more likely to be struck by lightning than to ever see this much rain in Houston all at once ever again. Your entire freshman year and some of your sophomore year were marked by our family’s survival and recovery from this unprecedented storm.

Then junior year rolled in and suddenly this new virus was taking over the world. Not only was our Spring Break trip to London canceled, but so were all the other junior year festivities you’d been waiting for… the Spring Musical, Nerf Gun Wars, school dances, youth retreats, mission trips, and summer camps. School finally reopened a couple of weeks into your senior year, but the virus not only wreaked havoc on the hospitals and the economy, it began destroying and dividing friendships and communities as well. No one agreed on the right thing to do when it came to COVID-19, least of all professionals in the medical community and our government leaders at every level. Everyone had different opinions on EVERYTHING: from mask-wearing to vaccines, to when and how to open businesses and schools. Once in-person school finally restarted, everything was different. Masks, social distancing, health protocols, zoom meetings, and frequent quarantines due to “possible exposures,” all of which changed your friendships as much as your calendar.

But one more “unprecedented” event was still in store for your senior year. For the first time in recorded history, Houston was flung into another state of emergency when Winter Storm Uri made his appearance. I didn’t realize winter storms were given names until this one shut down our city for weeks. We initially celebrated with you as classes were canceled by turning off all our alarms, and we allowed you to invite a dozen of your closest friends over Sunday evening for Valentine’s dinner. This despite knowing some would likely end up trapped if the roads froze sooner than expected. To salvage what felt like a senior year full of disappointments, we tried as often as possible to say yes to your hair-brained schemes that usually involved a house full of teenagers or spontaneous road trips with friends. Valentine’s dinner was lovely and indeed many of your friends ended up sleeping over. It snowed (like really snowed) overnight and we woke up to a beautiful winter wonderland unlike any I’ve ever seen in Houston before. I pulled out our collection of ski clothes, grabbed the boogie boards we use on our day trips to Galveston Beach, and trekked to the bayou at the back of the neighborhood to slide down the snow-covered hills.  

Many of your friends settled in with us for the long haul once their homes lost water and power. Aunt Kellie and the cousins joined our party after almost 20 hours of freezing temps without heat, water, or hot food in their home. With so many mouths to feed, we ran out of food quickly, so I used four-wheel drive for the first time in my life and headed to the grocery store just across from the neighborhood. The store was out of milk, produce, eggs, water, and bread but after waiting more than an hour in the checkout line, I made it home with frozen taquitos, pizzas, and waffles, canned ravioli, sparkling water, applesauce, and boxes of brownie mix. By Tuesday, we too had lost power and water, but thankfully had lots of family and friends around to help create body heat, a fireplace for some added warmth, and a gas oven to toast our taquitos and waffles. Power outages lasted weeks, gas stations and stores remained empty for even longer, and clean water, trash pickup, mail service, and schools were initially canceled indefinitely as the city (and the power grid) struggled to regroup in the aftermath of the storm.

That really does feel like a lot of unprecedented events, cancelations, and losses in just four years! But, this Leap Year has me realizing, while those were some hard times, they were not the hardest four years of your young life. Not by a long shot.

Daddy and I married 6 leap years ago, in 2000. Those first four years of married life certainly were full of their own joys, griefs, and unprecedented events that changed our lives forever. Daddy graduated college and got a job at a bank, I graduated and somehow survived my first years of teaching, and we watched as 9/11 devastated and then divided our country leaving us all confused as to who the real enemy was. We were grieved as my own mother faced her first cancer diagnosis at 42 years old, and overjoyed when her surgeries and treatments finally ended in remission. Then joy of joys, I found out I was going to be the mother of a beautiful baby girl!

You were four months old when your very first Leap Year began with a big shock. While holding your tiny frame against my chest with one hand, I held a positive pregnancy test in the other. I had no desire to be pregnant while my broken body was still recovering from birthing you, but I was equally shocked and completely devastated to find out the unlikely pregnancy was ectopic and would soon be lost. That was 2004, just over 20 years ago now. I visited the medical center to treat this life-threatening situation and then was left unable to nurse you for 48 hours. Forced to give you a bottle of formula for the first time, your face immediately began to swell and your tiny body was suddenly covered in hives. We jumped in the car with the pediatrician on the line, watching the whole time for any sign of blue lips, as we rushed straight back to the medical center begging God to keep you breathing!  

He did, and the next four years once again felt like forever and a flash as we added two new babies to the mix. You were 3 and your brother was barely 1 when we found out another Spaulding baby was on the way. That was March 2006. I remember it well because it was the same week my sister, your Aunt Heather, was diagnosed at 29 years old with terminal cancer. We spent the next year and a half watching new life begin in my womb, even as Aunt Heather’s young life slowly faded away. Between a constantly pregnant momma who was caregiving and grieving her sister’s illness, the joy (and stress) of new siblings, and attending and processing your first funeral- those first four years of your life forced you to grow up a little faster than most toddlers.

Thankfully we had two wonderful grandmothers who walked with us through it all- doting over and delighting in you even as they constantly fought over whose turn it was to keep the grandkids! You don’t need me to remind you that the very next time Leap Year rolled around, you were officially in the hardest season of your young life. March 2012- exactly 12 years ago this month, my mom, your Nana, 53 years young, took her last breath in our dining room after a hard-fought battle with reoccurring bouts of cancer. Later that same year, Daddy’s mom, your Mamaw lost her own battle with a rare blood disorder leaving you at 8 years old to process and grieve the deaths of two more close family members. Again, forced to grow up much too fast for my liking.

2016 is the next time Leap Year rolled around, and you were suddenly in middle school. Your body’s reaction to formula is not the only time we’ve rushed you off to the doctor or hospital in your short life and your mysterious reactions and illnesses all seemed to come to a head that year. Surely puberty played a role in the physical challenges you were suddenly facing including chronic pain, unusual rashes, joint dislocations, fatigue, passing out unexpectedly, and high levels of inattention and anxiety. Looking back, I can’t help but wonder how much the stress and grief of your early years contributed to your body’s big reactions that landed you with a series of diagnoses including some unidentified auto-immune disorder. But, just like every other challenge that has ever been thrown at you, you faced this season with courage, joy, and fierce determination- always finding as much to rejoice in as you have to grieve, and always containing your joy and grief in the beautiful poems and stories you’d write.    

Perhaps it is precisely because of the depth of the joys and griefs you have faced in your life that you have always been able to capture so much truth and beauty in your writing. After all, your first published poem back when you were in 3rd grade was written while your Nana was dying of cancer. And the poem that won you fourth place in the city-wide poetry slam in middle school was about the jelly beans she used to sneak you and the jellybeans you still eat to remember her.

I tend to get sad each time another March or another Leap Year rolls around. My heart and mind are set spinning as I recall all the losses of the Marches and Leap Years past, and I am tempted to grow cynical and despair as I brace myself for more hard things that must be waiting just around the corner. More cancer, hurricanes, pandemics, abandonments, and deaths. More disappointing cancelations, personal failures, unmet needs and desires, and unbearable heartbreaks. But this year, I am choosing to remind myself that some of my greatest joys and most treasured relationships also came to life in Leap Years and Marches. For starters, my wedding day, the birth of my only son, and the announcement that our Hallie would soon be joining our crazy crew! We’re not ever promised that life will be easy, but we are promised that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives, even when life feels impossibly hard. God is not a Father who simply meets all our felt needs and then fulfills a few of our wants along the way- He is a Father who knows us intimately, delights in us, makes Himself known to us, works good in us and through us (even when we can’t see any good in ourselves), and then far beyond our wants and needs, He does for us immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine.

I also tend to get sad when I think about how quickly you had to grow up and how distracted and grief-stricken I was for so much of your childhood. It kills me knowing I am the cause of someone else’s pain! But then I’m reminded my childhood had its own hard things, and those hard things have not destroyed me. Rather God has used those hard things to make me who I am and to equip me for the good work he has prepared in advance for me to do. And then I think of my mom and the fact that her hard things were 100s of times harder than my hard things ever were. And how she too was not destroyed by them. Like me, my mom made a lot of mistakes and some of her mistakes were even the cause of some of the hardest things I’ve ever faced. But rather than be consumed with what could have been or what should have been, I’ve chosen instead to allow myself permission to grieve the hard while rejoicing in all the goodness and mercy that is. As a wise friend often says, two things can be true at the same time. We can be both hurt by and loved by the same person. Life can be simultaneously hard and good. We are at the same time both sinners and saints. Merciful truth can persist in the patient pursuit of gentle justice. Healing sometimes comes through breaking. Brokenness will all be restored. And joy and grief often coexist all along the way.

We never did make it to London, but I did unexpectedly find myself that same summer on an unlikely trip to Seattle where that blasted virus first made its domestic appearance just a few months earlier. It was no London, but even despite the mask mandates and ongoing lockdowns, I fell in love with the breathtaking views and the lovely flowers in full bloom as I drank in all the shades of green and the brilliant colors I had never before seen. I’ve heard it can be a dreary place when the flowers are not in bloom, but I am absolutely convinced I’d love it all the same. You? Well, I’m not sure I can recall all the places you have visited over the last four years since our canceled London trip. First, there was Alaska and Idaho. Then Georgia, Romania, and The Dominican Republic. Then most recently were your visits to Arkansas, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Colorado. And of course, there was that one year you called California home giving me ample excuses to visit California myself! I’d say both our canceled trips last Leap Year have already been redeemed in ways we would never have thought to ask or imagine. But alas, just as I was beginning to think all these sad thoughts about previous Leap Years and Marches gone by, you texted me with the dates of your next big trip having just purchased tickets to visit your dear friend who is spending a semester in London. So it turns out your trip to London was not canceled after all- it was merely postponed until the following Leap Year.

Well, here’s to another March and more Leap Year adventures to come, knowing full well that every perceived cancelation, rejection, failure, and loss will be redeemed. And that redemption- far beyond what we need or want- will look like nothing we can possibly think to ask for or imagine. And when that redemption comes we will look back, together, and smile at how the days, months, and years of grief and groaning have felt like forever and a flash.  

I love you!

Mom