Commemorate

     I've written to you before you began.  I started writing just to journal.  My desire to be a mother was so great.  And, I wanted you to never doubt how much you were wanted, cherished.  I knew, as my mother's daughter, I wouldn't always be good at showing you love.  I suspected, like my mother, I would seek space between us sometimes.  As you pulled closer, I imagined history would repeat itself, and I- the mother- would pull away.  It was genetics.  Still, I wanted you to know what I was certain I wouldn't be able to show.  So, I wrote.

     I wrote about desperately wanting a child.  I wrote about a time, as a young adult, I went to the beach with my best friend and her first child.  This was a friend I'd had since college.  We were wild together.  We did things I hope you never will.  But, you will.  It's genetics.  Her toddler daughter was playing in the sand.  She was gorgeous!  Her brown curls escaped beneath her sun hat.  I regarded her sun-kissed cheeks, the folds of her chubby legs, and I ached.  So, I wrote more.

     I have written to you since I dreamed of you.  I have written to you since I longed for you. I have written to you since I learned my fallopian tubes were blocked by scar tissue from my many surgeries related to a brain injury.  I have written to you when I learned that an egg doctors had extracted from me was fertilized, by my husband's sperm, in a petrie dish. I have written to you while self injections made my womb an optimal home for you.  

     And, every day I was pregnant with you, I wrote.  Every day.  Just a little.  I wrote to let you know you were, you ARE, my everything.  And now, fourteen years later, I still write.  Though not nearly as often, on your birthday, Mother's Day, Christmas, I write to you.  As much as you drive me crazy.  As much as I KNOW life can be hard.  I want you to have proof, in black and white, that you are my every BREATH.  I love you!!