For the past three years, ever since Jettie was five and beginning to read, Mary and I have each written a note for her lunch every school day.
What began as a small act of love gradually became something more. At first, it was simply one more chance to tell her we loved her, one more way to wish her a good day, one more opportunity to send a little piece of ourselves with her when we couldn’t physically be there. But over time, the notes took on a deeper shape. They became ritual.
It is now one of my favorite parts of the day. Most mornings, it happens after I write my daily post and while I’m enjoying my coffee, in that quiet pocket before the day fully takes hold. I sit and think about how I want to say I love you. Sometimes the note is simple. Sometimes it is silly. Sometimes it is about what she has ahead of her that day. Sometimes it is encouragement. Sometimes it is just a reminder that her dada is thinking about her while she is out in the world becoming herself.
A few weeks ago, the notes evolved again. They became trading cards with varying levels of rarity. From a “Slimed” card to a “Fish Queen” card, they’ve turned into these strange little artifacts of absurdity and affection, small bits of nonsense meant to make her laugh, remind her to have fun, and let her feel loved in the middle of an ordinary school day. And maybe that is part of what love does over time: even the nonsense becomes a monument. The small, strange offerings we make almost without thinking one day may become the very things someone holds onto years later.
Recently, I read a post by a woman who had lost her mother to cancer when she was still a child. As an adult, she found her mother’s online journal and was able to read her words long after her mother was gone. That story stayed with me. It opened something in my heart and mind, and it made me think differently about these daily notes.
We have saved them, of course. But I found myself imagining Jettie one day discovering not just the notes themselves, but the story behind them. I wanted there to be some record that these were never just quick lunchbox messages dashed off in passing. I wanted her to know there was something more inside them. To me, they were prayers, sigils, little acts of love-charged intention. They were a way of being with her even when I wasn’t.
That is what I hope she might someday understand when she looks back on them. Every morning, her mother and I were doing something bigger than sending a cute note with lunch. We were casting one more spell of love over her life before she stepped out into the day.
And if I’m lucky, I will keep doing it for years. I hope I am there writing notes for her first day of junior high, her first day of high school, her first day of college if that is her path, her first day on the job, her wedding day, the day she brings home her first child, the baby shower, the housewarming, and all the moments I cannot yet imagine. Whatever the milestone is, whatever the season becomes, I hope I can still find a way to send her one more small blessing, one more tiny card, one more ridiculous joke, one more note tucked into the folds of a day.
Because that is what this has become for me: a daily practice of love. A ritual of presence in absence. A way of saying, wherever you go today, a part of my heart goes with you.
Parenting is full of fleeting acts that can feel small while you are living them. Packing lunches. Tying shoes. Signing folders. Waving goodbye in the drop-off line. But sometimes the smallest gestures become the holiest. Sometimes repetition turns love into liturgy.
Maybe one day, when she is much older, Jettie will look back at those notes and see more than words on paper or goofy little trading cards from her dada. Maybe she will see evidence of a daily devotion. Maybe she will understand that each one was a whisper sent ahead of her into the world: a little lunchbox blessing, a tiny piece of magick, a spell cast in love.