I dream about you all the time. Your eyes; what color will they
be? Your nose that looks so upturned in the ultrasound images... which
one of us contributed that feature? I picture your tiny hands, wrapped
around your umbilical cord, tying you to me in your cozy underwater home.
Your kicks punctuate my day, & your heartbeat sounds like rain; constant
& rhythmic.
We have names picked out, if you happen to be a boy or a girl. We are
keeping them secret. We want you to be the first to hear your own
name. We want you to own it.
Your Daddy is suddenly very inspired that we should obtain some of those
belly earphones so you can listen to some classical music. We have a
maternity Mozart CD that I listen to sometimes, but we don't know if you can
hear those tones swimming through the isolation of my womb to your ears.
I often sing for you. You seem to like that; you kick in rhythm to the
beat while I carry the melody (or sometimes the harmony... my habit of making
intricate harmonies up that I cannot break. I wonder if you will be born
hearing music differently because of this).
At night, after your Daddy easily drifts off to sleep, I lie awake &
imagine you. I think of all the things I want you to experience. I
imagine your nursery, how we will set it up. I fill it with things of my
childhood & try to remember for the morning to ask your Daddy if there is
anything from his childhood that he saved for the future that is you. I
imagine various textiles that will teach you texture through touch &
exploration. I envision bookshelves full of enticing titles with worn
edges, unabashedly showing the love I hope you will foster for
literature. I see little wooden toys & happily patched stuffed
creatures strewn across the playscape of your childhood.
I realize I think a lot about the things we will have in your life.
Maybe that's because I want them all to be things you will cherish, rather than
an avalanche of stuff. Perhaps I fixate on this because I want to limit
our belongings from the get-go, so I want to be sure that the items you have
are ones that are worthwhile.
Long before I drift into strange pregnancy dreams, I imagine your
birthdays. I see a child growing like bamboo, crazy-fast, & a little
haphazardly. I see you scraping your knees & eating snow (not the
yellow snow!). I imagine making cardboard box houses with you, &
outlining a village in the backyard with river rocks, reading "Roxaboxen"
& telling you how your Uncle W & I played this game with chalk on the
back patio as children. I see your Daddy & me saving money aside for
your birthdays, so every year that you grow older we can take you on a journey
to someplace new. We want you to learn so much about this world we live
in. We like to think a life's worth of birthday experiences will be so
much more meaningful than a life's worth of birthday toys that you will only
outgrow one day.
I try to imagine what it would be like to hop on a plane with you &
Daddy, on our way to visit Aunt D & Uncle B, or en route to a birthday
adventure.
Would I have an anxiety
attack?
Will you end up with my
shortcomings, like anxiety?
I hope you
end up like your Daddy; calm & easy-going.
I try to imagine you growing close to your
cousins.
I didn’t always get to be close
to mine, but these days technology will make it easy for you to babble via face-time
with Cousin L in Arizona!
You will
likely spend a lot of time interacting with your cousins M & J.
You are all so close in age; I wonder what
the dynamic will be like ten years from now.
Sometimes, I wonder if I will be a good enough Mama for you.
I worry that I worry too much.
Yes, I worry about worrying.
Sometimes, I say that I am not ready for
this.
I don’t want all these changes,
all these responsibilities.
But I think
about you too often, & cherish you too much for those moments of doubt to
represent a real dissociation.
Sometimes, I feel like a child myself.
I can’t imagine how I will provide you with all the things you deserve
when I can barely function on my own!
Your Daddy takes me in his arms & dries my tears, always telling me
how I will be the best Mama for you, because I already care so much.
Your Daddy will be your rock, too.
He chases away monsters & reminds us of
who we really are when we lose ourselves in all the stresses of daily life.
I can’t promise that you will always get what you want in life.
I can’t promise that life will be easy for
you.
I can’t promise that I will always
be collected & reliable when you need me to be, or even that your Daddy
will be able to make all things better.
But I can promise you all the love we have, smiles at least once every
day, & honesty.
We want to build a
stable life for you, one in which you feel grounded & safe.
We want so much for you.
But all we can fully promise is love.
You will never want for that.
All my Love,
Mama
