Loretta

Loretta was the name I was going to give to my last child if he had been born a she. I trotted this name around to my nearest and dearest, to mixed reviews and a few laughs. My mother insisted that I was joking, saying there was no way I’d ever give this name to a little girl born in the year 2016. I smiled politely and put my Loretta nicknames and my visions of saying this name a million different ways back in my pocket. My neighbor laughed so hard that she almost had to change her pants. Back in the pocket Loretta goes. I know Loretta and I know what kind of little girl she’ll make so I don’t worry about the teasing or the laughing that could follow her around.

But on October 6th, 2016, I gave birth to Beck Seton Robinson. My dear friend Mary had passed a few months earlier and so Beck is given Mary’s middle name. Here he is, Beck Seton. No better soul to borrow a name from than Mary’s. She was the stuff of gold. And with this birth, gone are the dreams of my oldest having a sister. I know all too well the love that comes along with having a sister and I wanted this for her almost more than anything I ever wanted for myself. Truly…I wanted the peanut butter and jelly-ness of that bond for her so bad that I dreamt about it almost every night…even though…even though on the night Beck was conceived, I heard a voice in my head say “welp, there he is.” Beck wasn’t the result of trying for a third baby so this voice was shrugged off and forgotten about until he was placed in my arms on the day of his birth when I was the one who announced the sex of the baby in the delivery room. Then it clicked. Oh, right, that prophetic whisper in my ear…it was a sneak into my journey. This truth lands as hard on me as does Beck’s Autism diagnosis two and a half years later. With his differences comes a new dynamic in our family. But prior to this, Hazel had already begun to transform from a little person who was obsessed with making herself up into the girl of her dreams and morphed, in some ways as soon as he was earthside, into a doting big sister. Way less about herself and way more about him. She knows all kinds of things before they are known to the rest of us so I can say with some level of certainty that she knew what was down the pike for Beck and decided early on to smother him with love. The example of the sister Hazel was never going to have is the lesson of Loretta. Loretta is the departure of what was dreamed of and longed for and pined for with every cell of my soul, and being shepherded to what we need instead. We needed Beck. We needed the lessons of patience, accommodation, compassion, and the novel vantage points he provides us. Loretta made way for all of us to get outside of our own heads so that we could love more wildly on the folks around us. We talk more about others’ stories and journeys now. We love bigger and harder and we meet others where they’re at far more often than we would have if Loretta came to be instead of Beck Seton. It’s not as though we were selfish savages before and now we’re born again, we’ve always been big lovers. In fact, the Robinson brand of love is something that results in constant houseguests and out of town visitors, people who can’t stay away from us for too long, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. But with Loretta stepping aside, Beck Seton was allowed in to help us clean up the cobwebs of our hearts so that we could fully occupy all of our heart real estate, greeting the world around us from that place.

Loretta is us now yearning for the days of our life back in Philadelphia when I had originally moved there with a begrudging, half-hearted smile and a promise to myself that I would always come back home to the West Coast. Even when we were eventually re-located back to CA through my husbands job, after having spent eight years in Philly, we were gleeful. We practically skipped through the airport to board our plane home when it was time to leave, not fully acknowledging how our experience in the Northeast had changed us. Fast forward to being back home in Los Angeles for all of nine months, and we were homesick for the sound of the blue collared, 5th generation, Philadelphian. We wanted so badly to sink our teeth into the aberration of a cheese whiz soaked steak sandwich. But mostly, we ached for the people we had become closest with while there. These were the folks who thought nothing of inviting us to their intimate family gatherings over the holidays because they couldn’t and wouldn’t allow us to be home alone without the cheer of a cacophonous household. We took full advantage of their hospitality and immersed ourselves in their families, their culture, and their traditions. The city of Philadelphia, Center City to be exact, is like a smaller NYC. Easier to take in for two newlyweds who, up to that point, spent all of their waking and available hours on the beach. The streets of this seemingly rough city are teeming with people who are calloused enough to ward off any inclination you might have to spark up pleasant small talk. But that exterior is just a preview to how fiercely they’ll love you once you’re in their fold. There is a beauty in the lack of vanity in this region of the country. For when you’re up against a Noreaster, there’s no time for looking cute. It’s about utility and for some, it’s all utility all the time. The anonymity you’re afforded in a big city is what you can lean on when you’re walking home after a terribly haunting therapy session or a last date with someone you had visions of doing so much more with. You don’t have to have a nervous pit in your stomach while feeling and living out in the open on the subway or throughout the streets because everyone else is paying so much less attention to you than you can even imagine. Now, I won’t go as far as to say Los Angelenos are as vain as people elsewhere think they are, but there is definitely some truth in those stereotypes. Philly is the antithesis of L.A. in more reasons than this but for me, almost solely because of this as it is what I noticed foremost upon arriving back east. For a self conscious kid from the land of beautiful people, this was the salve my self image needed. I wish I hadn’t felt so much like an outsider the whole time I was there because these were my people more than anywhere else I’d ever been. But really, that outsider feeling, if I’m being candid, has followed me a lot of places because it’s in me. I have struggled to return home to myself for most of my years on this planet, so I can’t and won’t hold that part of my experience against Philadelphia. Most adoringly, I love the symbiosis and richness of the diverse people of the city. You have such a myriad of different walks of life who would all stop dead in their tracks to do the right thing for a perfect stranger. They take pride in the fact that their ethos’ are steeped in good values and proven through even better gestures. On any given day, you can see a young man, who might come across as a tough kid, holding the door for an elderly lady more than a block away - thinking nothing of how long it will take her to lumber down the street. He knows it’s the right thing to do and he doesn’t complain or want a pat on the back for it. Although, the air of this city in the summer can be oppressively foul, it reeks more of love than anything else I can think of, aptly calling for its name as the ‘City of Brotherly Love.’ And as you can tell, abundant love is what we have for this place. We felt fully alive while we were there, if we’re being completely honest with ourselves. But that honesty and clarity came months after being transferred home to what we believed to be the best coast. To sum up our experience back home following our stint in Philadelphia is to say “you never really can go back home.” Which is to say it’s never the same and if what you’re wanting is what you remember, then you best get to recalibrating those emotional expectations of yours. If Philadelphia was the experience we were meant to have, the Pacific Northwest was our Loretta.

Loretta is also what 2020 was supposed to be for the Robinson family. At the mention of this particular year, most people will twist their faces into one of cavernous sorrow and frustration. I can go there, too, believe me. It’s pretty easy. This is the year our family moved 1600 miles from the place we had called home for the three years prior. Before the move, we had regaled the kids with tales of all the beautiful places we’d go visit now that we’d be positioned so conveniently to them. We promised that they’d meet a whole new group of friends and that they’d enjoy the bounty of Idaho’s recreational life. We were going to get them mountain bikes and snowboards and rafts for the river. They got all the accoutrements but none of the friends. They got all of the heartbreak of leaving and none of the thrill of reception. They had tired and frustrated parents to contend with who knew nothing of comforting words for them as this was all new, even to the adults. They said goodbye to their beautifully and fully renovated home and struggled to love the home we’d acquired on the other end, the one with “potential.” They made do with lots of drive thru ice cream, imaginary games with dress up in costumes they’d long been bored with but were now willing to breathe new life into, and best of all, with each other. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were dressing up and making use of their evidently endless imaginations as a way of escaping the new life we’d carved out for them and then failed miserably to execute. Well, we didn’t fail miserably, but how could they know that? I could’ve slipped into a steep slide of should’ves and could’ves but….BUT….one day, my impending heartbreak was saved by a friend who welcomed into the collective consciousness the notion that we were all getting back a year of our kids’ childhoods. This stuck with me like honey to a measuring spoon. It reinvigorated me and stood like a lighthouse in the storm reminding me of all the social media posts I’d made where I pleaded for a time freezer so that my babies wouldn’t vanish before my eyes, turning into big kids without my express permission. It was a silver lining, and one that I intentionally kept to myself. Imagine saying something like this to a group of friends who are, by all accounts and measures, struggling to keep their heads above water in this never-before-chartered territory. Some still working and now homeschooling. Some now pulling triple duty as they watch the help they once had sequestered in their homes under the ‘shelter in place’ order that has rendered the same for themselves. Most wishing they could tender any amount if it would just result in life going back to the way it was. The devil you know is always better than the one you don’t. And so, like I did with Loretta’s name all those years ago, I put this silver lining back in my pocket. Only for me to savor. And 2020 continued to go on its tear, ravaging all expectations and hopes for normalcy. But….BUT….I had my pocket secret. I watched and learned as we all found our sea legs. As a family, we started to write our own rules for quarantine survival. We became a better team. We listened to music more. Danced more. Wrestled more. Played more family games. Developed new rituals. Added to our repertoire of inside family jokes. Tried new foods and lengthened our list of family dinners that all members enjoy (this, perhaps, being one of mom’s favorite things to come out of 2020). We started hiking. We DID explore the bounty of Idaho’s spectacular outdoors. We DID venture to one of the beautiful places we promised to take the kids to once we lived here, the gorgeous Oregon Coast. And like a lot of people, we got a pandemic puppy. We all laughed together so much harder and so much more with him around. We were now 6 Robinsons deep, and all the better for it. So, it is with unquestionable appreciation that I can say Loretta was the life we imagined beginning here in Idaho and 2020 was what we needed. Even as I write this, I’m reticent to say it because the pandemic brought with it, as of the time I’m writing this, 300,000 less souls than we should’ve had at our nation’s dinner tables and family events. This is not lost on me. It is this fact alone that has me swimming in gratitude every single day. And it’s because of this that we brought back the gratitude practice we’d long held at the dinner table where everyone takes a turn saying what they’re grateful for. Everyday without fail, one of us always mentions our health, even if the rest of us say some kind of throwaway thing. I won’t pretend I’m not allowed to have my moment amidst this crisis - I’ll just maintain and insist that it’s okay for my renewal to exist alongside other people’s heartbreak and that I’ll hold an immeasurable amount space for them in my heart for the rest of my days.

Loretta has come to symbolize to me everything that I thought I wanted or thought I needed, while the beautiful universe manifests differently, playing her prophetic hand of all-knowing wisdom despite my progenitor role which believes itself to be all the wiser. In turn, my faculties are corralled and inventoried so that their ingenious purpose can be revealed to me. My heart explored and widened as I walk toward acceptance and away from the stagnant air of resistance. My smile lines made into tiny canyons on my face at the awe and beauty of all there is to be learned and loved.

Loretta the wunderkind, Loretta the sage.