To celebrate our ten year anniversary, we are inviting back former writers back to tpc in order to hear what they’ve been thinking about since leaving the post calvin. Today, please welcome back Caroline Nyczak. Caroline lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan and teaches English at Zeeland East High School. She is the mother of Ryan, who turns three next week, and is thirty-eight weeks pregnant with a baby girl. She is responding to her 2018 post “A Letter to My Daughter (Should I Have One)”
Dear Daughter,
Every morning I wake to your brother’s face, which at his current height just perfectly clears the top of my mattress. When left to sleep as long as he pleases, he wakes around 8 am and lately, so do I. This means that sometimes the first thing I see when I open my eyes is Ryan smiling at me, bouncing a bit, arms outstretched so I can reach over and pull him in next to me for a few moments of cuddles and connection. He wants to look out the window and say things like “Mama, it’s morning” or “The birds are waking up.” I’m telling you this because I want you to know that this is what it feels like to be alive—to search for another face upon waking, to look for the light.
We’ll likely wake earlier when you arrive, of course, but for now I am savoring the late mornings. It’s summer now, the most glorious of seasons, and as we venture downstairs to toast frozen waffles and plan the day, Ryan will occasionally ask if there is school today. There isn’t. We’ve been done for three weeks now, both of us, and I won’t be going back for over a year, which means I get to spend your whole first year of life with you. What will we do everyday? Visit every park in a one hour radius, frequent the library, finally make bread with all those black bananas in the freezer. You’re going to love it: trees and books (and bread, eventually.) My friend recently told me that this kind of year is “the stuff of memoirs, a year of babies” which is true, I suppose. At the very least, it’s a reminder to journal well. You see, it’s tempting to believe that an ordinary life is not that special, but that kind of thinking is a trap. As Dad likes to remind us, the ordinary is a luxury. If anything ever happened to us, all we would want was this little life back. So we don’t pray for more, we give thanks for boring lives and try not to be afraid.
Sometimes, in the evenings, there is a thunderstorm. Your father and brother both love them, and we watch from the screened-in porch. Ryan waits for “the flash!” and then says “Again!” He is not afraid. Last summer, we nearly watched a tornado. It was late, and Ryan was asleep. Listening to the sirens, I kept asking if we should go downstairs and your dad said he’d let me know when. I trusted him to know if it was really getting bad. He is the midwesterner, so I trust him. I am not from here. We lost power, and a tree came down two doors down. Two months later, on Halloween, I found out about you. I told no one for twenty-four hours, holding it close, gently refusing a shot of whiskey from a friend before we took our kids out trick-or-treating in the snow. Yes, it snowed on Halloween. We live in Michigan and the winters remind us that sometimes the world is cold and cruel. The knowledge that you will learn this, in your own way and in ways I cannot predict, is one of the hardest things about being a parent. One day I will tell you about your brother’s namesake, maybe when you ask why I hate cars. One day I’ll tell you about my ultrasound the morning after the tornado, the one I shouldn’t have gone to alone, the one that made this pregnancy so precarious. One day I’ll tell you how I left a part of me back in New York. Or maybe you’ll just read all these old blog posts, my public diary.
But for now, it is summer, and we’ve almost made it, baby. I can’t wait to bring you home to our 896 square foot house with no dishwasher that I think is perfect. Some will say we will have to move when you arrive, or at least when you get bigger. I say, “We’ll see”. Right now the yard is green and fenced and the sun is hot but the porch is comfortable. Today it’s a place where I call everyone “baby” and the grocery list on the whiteboard only says “the good bread.” Today it’s a place where we are alive.

Caroline (Higgins) Nyczak (’11) lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she spends the vast majority of her time teaching English Language Arts. You may also find her at barre exercise classes or playing (and losing) at bar trivia. She continues to be inspired by the energy and diversity of New York City and the beauty of that certain slant of light.
Oh this is so lovely. I especially love “I’m telling you this because I want you to know that this is what it feels like to be alive—to search for another face upon waking, to look for the light.” Thank you for sharing with us!
Wonderful. Proud to know you.
It’s fabulous to be reminded of those precious days with little ones.