Oh Willa Goodall Lewis, daughter of Kelsey Anne Lewis and Waylon Hart Lewis.

How this my only life has changed, suddenly, with your arrival in our home into your mother’s loving arms.

How life changes, after evolving for so long, in fits and starts with exertion and joys and losses and confusion, sorrows and lonely visits and lovely nights, and success and dedication to the wisdom of the past and the full magic of this moment, and the benefit of tomorrow’s generations:

how life changes, and suddenly.

Yesterday, I was me, and we. And now I am a part of you, and you are in my heart, and I am yours, I am—with my wife your beloved mother—dancing in humble, exuberant, grateful celebration.

…words are easy and cheap and vague and convenient, too often: so know I mean it with all my being when I welcome you, littlest Willa Goodall Lewis, to a wonderful, wild world so full of quiet craft and community and goodness…and yet too so full of casual wasteful vapid cruelty, both.

You don’t have to choose between goodness and ignoring suffering. Go the way of your namesakes, your lineage, and live to be of benefit. Real benefit, not philosophy or ideology merely.

But know that however good your heart is, through and through—and it is and your path shall be a precious one—empathy and caring (your father’s very favorite word) means that there will always be a wholesome ache in your heart, a delight in and simultaneous compassion as you feel and care for this world.

You are small, now, but your being is already here, fully, and we can’t wait to see you blossom. But do not rush: take your time, for we shall treasure every fleeting day.

 

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