“Photography is inescapably a memorial art. It selects, out of the flow of time, a moment to be preserved, with the moments before and after falling away like sheer cliffs.” - Teju Cole, Memories of Things Unseen.
Mother’s Day. Sunday, May 10, 2015 taken hours before we’d head to the hospital.
Mother’s Day. Sunday, May 10, 2020, five years later.
You waited twenty four hours to arrive and I know now it was because that wasn’t supposed to be the plan. (We were told three weeks prior to your due date that we’d be checking into the hospital to have you in three days, out of concern for your safety.)
You emotionally postponed opening presents today for over an hour because you said it had been such a long time since you had a birthday, that you couldn’t remember what the order of events was supposed to be.*
You are a meticulous engineer (at times, a bit overboard) like your father.
You cried when Finn cut fresh tulips from the front yard and brought them to you in a vase. You were heartbroken that we killed the flowers. You tried to put them back into the earth, offering them a second chance at life.
You are empathetic (and hopeless) like your mother.
You chose to eat cake before presents followed by birthday nachos for dinner, wearing nothing but your underwear except for a mermaid tail at dinner. (You dressed each one of us during pre-party activities, including a dress and fur shawl for me, a black suit for dad and a button-up for Finn and yet you remained in undies.)
You are ridiculous (in all the best ways) like your brother.
And yet, Margaux Willa Milne, you are ferociously you. You are our Margaux, Margaux Willa, Willa Bean, MWM and X. You are our everything.
Happy fifth birthday, sweet girl.
*To be fair, nothing about this birthday was ordinary. We’re going into the third month of a god damn quarantine due to a global pandemic. The whole day seemed foreign because there could be no friends or gathering or grandparents or cousins over because of covid-19. Thanks, Obama.**
**To ensure a lack of confusion at a later date, there should be clarity given to ensure you know that we’re not, in fact, sarcastically thanking President Obama for ruining your fifth birthday. Trump ruined it.