Dear Baby,
I woke up this morning and cried for a long time. It was barely light out and I'd woken with your father's alarm. I lay in bed for a while in the dark listening to the sounds of him showering and readying himself in the bathroom.
I went to sleep last night feeling unsettled and it was all still there this morning. I called out to your father as he walked by the bedroom on his way to his desk and he came and sat in the bed with me and held me while I cried.
I couldn't really say what it was about. A thousand things. That feeling of wanting to go home, even though I was right there in the spot that's more home than I've been in a long time, in our bedroom with your father's arms around me. The tears dripped down my neck as I wept and yet I could feel you burbling and bumping around in my belly.
I'm afraid of everything that's to come. I'm scared about how much is going to change and I'm overwhelmed by everything that already has. Your dad and I talked last night about how soon after getting married we got pregnant and while I've thought of that from time to time these last few months, I don't think it would make a difference.
This is always going to be hard. There's never going to be some perfect time when both of us are ready for our lives to change as much as they are about to. But I firmly believe you can't have the highs without the lows. For all the moments I've relished my changing body, all the times I've delighted in learning just what my physical self is capable of these last months, for all the ways I'm thrilled about your pending arrival, I'm also mournful for what once was.
Oh, my dear, you'll go through so many transitions in this life. For just as overwhelming and scary as these days can be right now, I've been here before. I was here the night before I started college, sitting on the stoop of a restaurant in which I'd been dining with my parents. Our last meal together before they set me free into the world. And I couldn't eat for all that was welling up inside me. I sat on the stoop outside, my mother rubbing my back while I sobbed, ushering me gently into a brave new life.
And again, the night my father died. Standing on his little patio in the balmy Southern California night air. The flowering hibiscus bush and the quiet slap-slap of the water in the swimming pool the only things pulling me back to this world. I had just watched him take his very last breaths and, in doing so, the whole world had shifted from underneath me. Nothing would ever be the same again.
And it was this way too, the night before I moved to Chicago to start this life with your father. I had tucked myself into bed in a motel in Missouri, the cats hiding under the coffee table my only company. All my belongings in a truck in the parking lot. The feeling that I could just disappear, that this rootless self I was in that moment could simply evaporate. The not knowing of what was to come in the days ahead staining my pillow with warm tears.
I've been here before. And you'll be here as well. In this place of uncertainty. This cliff at the edge of change. And when you are, when you are standing there with tears wetting your beautiful lashes, remember that you are not alone, that we have all stood here before you and that we stand with you now.
Love,
Mom
