Our Youngest Turns 28

It has been an eventful year
circling the sun!

You finished your PhD dissertation
on the bus to the airport
for a job interview
and knew
you got that professor job
(at that really good college!)
before you even came back.
Then you successfully
and with grace
defended that dissertation
(on Holographic Techniques
in Strongly Coupled Matter)
as well as got a mentor award
and another teaching award.
Then graduation!
We were (are!) so proud of your
hard work and perseverance,
and we gathered to celebrate you.
We know it wasn’t easy,
and that you throwing in the towel
was a real possibility,
but you honored yourself,
and stuck it out
through to completion.
(The evening after
the hooding ceremony,
in our little, stone AirBnB,
trying to segue toward sleep,
your sister quipped
that she couldn’t even read,
she was JUST SO PROUD of you.)
While there, we got to meet
a tribe of excellent women
you had cultivated as mentors;
you built a support system
of such good people
to turn to for encouragement,
which is a hugely important
life skill right there.
(We brought them homegrown jam
which was hardly thanks enough.)

Next,  we went to find you
housing for your relocation,
which was a whole story in itself,
but ended with single option
which is close, small,
and affordable, with
unfortunately no bathtub,
and a bizarre toilet
that is like a throne.
We went to Boston
for Annual Meeting,
and taught you to drive,
riding around with you
all over Connecticut
to hikes and rose gardens
we had never been to
in order to get
your driving hours in.

Meanwhile, we helped you
pack up, and get your stuff down
from your third floor apartment
moving you to the most charming
little town in upstate New York,
and we stayed on
at the inn next door
to help you settle into
that tiny place
where everything did fit in,
just so. We were so relieved
to get you out of that sketchy,
crumbling, urban environment
to somewhere so healthy,
so much safer, and with
amazingly breathable air
(even though
their street lights
are blindingly too bright
in your windows at night).

You came back here to car shop
and you did a great job of it,
settling on a used, navy
Mazda CX-5, which you are
so very pleased with,
your gratitude for it
practically oozes
out of your pours.
You thank me repeatedly
that I never pushed you
to learn to drive
before you were ready,
but oh wow,
you are ready now
and like it, too.
(Suddenly, the years of me
driving you around, are over.)

We are impressed by how quickly
you’ve built community
in your new home:
playing your accordion in
Thursday evening jam sessions,
being invited to
a weekly knitting group
by someone at your
church there
(who grows enormous
eggs that you buy),
as well as a handwork group
at the local library,
a monthly spinning guild,
and getting to know people
even at the farmer’s market,
which is a block
from your front door
(oh, the amazing buttermilk,
and oatmeal sourdough bread,
the iced, soft,
gingerbread cookies,
incredible local honey,
and perky, cheerful gladiolas
sold by the stem there).
You buy yourself
a handmade, inlaid
charcuterie board,
a water purifier,
a spinning wheel for flax,
a cast iron griddle,
a second hand coffee table,
hard-core snow boots,
and bespoke, green, Mary Janes.

On autumn Sundays
you grade papers
at a picnic table
overlooking a lake
after church
and some sushi.
You teach
Thermodynamics, in the fall,
Electricity and Magnetism, now.
The prep is like
trudging up a mountain,
many hours longer
than you want it to be.
(Adulting can be a very tricky
life-balance equation.)
But the colleagues and campus
are absolutely wonderful.
Your big office has lovely view
of a wooded hill.
Your commute is five minutes.
It’ll be easier
when you’ve already taught
these courses before.
You try to make the subject matter
interesting and approachable.
You need to remind yourself
of all the time off
you’ll have in the summer
(yay! a lot of it with me!).

You drive to visit us most months.
You came to the family funeral
in Amarillo in October.
Thanksgiving we laid low here,
while you carved symbolic stamps
for a new reading journal
you are creating
so you can capture
the info you want to remember
without having to write reviews.
(Spoiler alert: we bought you
colorful ink stamp pads
for them for your birthday.)
How many books
did you read last year? 110?
Which still amazes me,
from a kid I despaired
would ever read.
(You say the number of books
you read is an accurate barometer
of how stressed you feel.)

In December, your final
was scheduled in the last slot.
You were wiped out when it’s done,
crawling over our doorsill,
sleeping for days.
(You literally
spent Christmas Day
sleeping on the floor
in front of the fire.)

In February, you gave me
an amazing artist journal
you beautifully designed
and carefully made
with a fun quilted cover.
You are gearing up now,
with this semester
still crescendoing,
almost too busy to even
notice your special day.

But I’m noticing it,
and am so grateful
for having heard from you
so often over the last year,
and that you still
share your life with us,
which is precious to me
beyond words.
I love hearing it all.
Even the little stuff:
how you prefer to sew a seam,
how you need to get
your windshield wiper replaced,
who you had lunch with,
and what food they served
at the faculty “tunk.”
And you are so sweetly
supportive of me, remembering
what I have going on,
and telling me to paint,
when I start grieving
climate change or
governmental shenanigans.

I’m so grateful
to be along with you
on these trips around the sun,
and I love that you express
so much overflowing gratitude
for all sorts of everyday stuff
and that the phrase
you use most often is
“this brings me so much joy!”
You love the snow
and “a proper winter”;
you cherish the shape
of your itsy bitsy kitchen;
your watch fob in your
welted vest pocket thrills you,
you are devoted to your
homemade fleece skirts
and your external
18th century pocket;
you delight in knitting
two socks simultaneously
and in fastening your
crown braid to your head
with a bodkin and ribbon;
you relish filling your
fountain pens with colors
named pitted nickel, bonsai,
sea snail, april showers,
and boiler steam;
you are enchanted by the sound
of the frogs in the spring,
and so very many other things.

And what brings me joy?
You do.
Every second that
I’ve been getting to know you
brings me tremendous joy.
To quote your boss, you are,
“Just the right kind of quirky.”

We love you–
you reclusive extrovert,
with all your self-awareness,
and such a large grasp on life,
so authentic and transparent,
gleeful, creative, insightful,
productive and real.

May you have
a special day today
and may your whole next
trip around the sun
be an unfoldment
of all sorts of joy
with a lot less stress,
and more life balance.
And also, here’s to
our vacation together
this summer!

by Polly Castor
2/13/2025