Be you.

 

Good music.  Good friends.  Good...goats?

Dear Ava,

I believe it would be most beneficial to our relationship for me to come clean with you right now, before you have to face any embarrassing questions at school or attempt to make clumsy explanations at future birthday parties.

Your mother is a very weird bird.  

Now, your Daddy is what most consider fairly normal, and probably on the brilliant side of that definition.  I'm sure that by the time you read this, you will have noticed that he has a knack for doing Most Everything, which is an annoying ability to compete with, but makes for a lovely cohabitation.

Mommy, on the other hand, fell out of the Funny Tree when she was born and hit every branch on her way down.  Though I'm often labeled as free-spirited, freedom had nothing to do with my kind of creativity which in the past has driven frustrated schoolteachers to shake my head from my shoulders and aspiring music managers to pitch themselves at me like flying alligator lizards.  On the contrary, I've found that the greatest asset to the creative mind is boundary and limitation, informed by world of arts and letters and tempered by the occasional thrill of travel.  And poverty.  Invention, this is your mom, Necessity.

The first place you will come to know Mommy's eccentricities is in our home.  Part grande estate, part hobbit-hole, it's the one place where I can wear my floor-length patchwork dresses and keep our peacock-inspired Christmas tree on display year- round and no one can say a bloomin' thing about it.  Thanks to my version of pickle-flavored domesticity, you will likely grow up thinking that it's perfectly natural to install major and minor kitchen appliances anywhere but the kitchen (ex: a coffee

pot in the bedroom, a refrigerator in the nursery, etc.). You will also be more likely to make friends with a Pygmy goat than with Malibu 

Barbie. I think that most children's programming is a crude and obnoxious ploy to influence a tot's preferences for character-themed toys, candy, and underpants, so I will gladly introduce you to your own world of pets, picture books, and bedtime stories starring you and your own specially-named nursery toys.  Where else but Avaland will you find friends like Pea-Joe Dogtoy, Miss Blueshoes, Beary Brandt, and Honey Boo Boo Dog?  Who needs SpongeBob when you have Mommy and The Brothers Grimm?

Under my housewifery, you will learn to thrill to the appearance of new secondhand clothes, or the smell of rosewood oil and cinnamon diffusing from a pot on the stove, or the sound of Stevie Nicks bleating from the living room speakers as we do our morning chores.  At least I hope you will... And I'm willing to compromise the Stevie Nicks in favor of The White Album or anything by Paul Simon.

It's a good thing that you came along when you did, or else your home life would have been a great deal more counterculture-flavored.  I used to dust much less than I do (I preferred the term "beggar's lace" to cobwebs, thankyouverymuch), keep about thirteen half-feral cats at a time, and decorate with scads of Catholic saint candles found for a dollar on the grocer's bottom shelf in predominantly Baptist towns (for no other reason than the fact that they were cheap light during tornado season).  Books doubled as furniture (one can make a fabulous bedside table or toilet paper holder out of an outdated encyclopedia collection), quilts and scarves became window treatments and formal tablecloths, and hot homegrown peppermint tea was offered to guests in lieu of sparing the expense for coffee.  

Yes, my little love, your Mum has become a bit more tasteful and a great measure more hospitable than she was in the past.  Heck, I even try to sweep up the majority of the pug dander and hide my bad poetry before company arrives.  But be forewarned:  at no point in the near future do I intend get
a sensible/manageable mommy haircut, purchase you one of those mind-numbing KidzSing! recordings of "The Wheels on the Bus", or keep a house that reeks of suburban scents like Mop'n'Glo or Febreeze.  

Just because you've been born into a semi-bohemian household doesn't mean that I expect your tastes to run the same as mine.  As a matter of fact, I would be thrilled if they ran screaming in the opposite direction.  What I want to teach you is to have preferences of your own, independent of the influence of your peers or parents.  

As They Might Be Giants so wisely stated: 

"Be you. Be what you're like.  Be like yourself."  

Since half of your DNA is mine, I think you won't be able to help but be blazingly individualistic anyway.