Hi Lara! You’re fifty-four. I think I’m supposed to say that time flies, but good gracious, this day feels like an eternity ago. So it didn’t fly. It kind of chugged along slowly on a rickety wooden track, uphill and bumpy – start and stop and red and green – but Lala, you know how much I love a great train ride.
This morning, I re-read a letter you wrote to me when you was about to get married. I couldn’t remember what you were like that long ago, which nuances in your personality had already developed and which ones had sprouted over the past three decades, leafy and lush. And Lara, you’ve grown, sure, but you haven’t changed a bit.
You are fierce and mischievous and wise and soulful and funny and tentative and sensitive and so so so chatty, but your edges are softening. You’ve learned how the world works and you’ve found where you fit. Each experience buffs your edges and it’s so visible it’s crazy, like when you file your nails from wild and reckless to smooth. Refined.
I once read that, when Michelangelo was asked how he managed to sculpt such beautiful creations, he replied with this simple statement: “In every block of marble, I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.”
And I suppose that’s the beauty of it all, my sister. Our father wasn’t really the sculptor at all. Our statues have been created by something bigger than us, and our job is to withstand the chiseling – firm enough to stand, soft enough to be carved.
I see both of those attributes in you, now more than ever. You are marble, Lara. You swirl with strength and sensitivity, with steadiness and flexibility. And someday, you’re going to make a beautiful statue – even despite the rusty, imperfect tools our parents were working with. You’ll stand big and tall, a house for whatever light you choose to shine.
XO,
Brendy-boo-boo
