I've been waiting for you

Dear Laylah,

It's after 2 a.m. and you are sleeping soundly next to me. I always judge the way you look before I go to sleep as some sort of indication as to how long it will be before you wake up. I usually grossly overestimate your sleep time which each night enables me to give myself permission to toil away into the wee small hours. I have gone back and forth about this since you started sleeping through the night. I have sacrificed some much-needed daytime energy to be awake during these very quiet hours and I have felt frustrated with myself for doing it and guilty for lacking the energy the next day, yet I have kept repeating it night after night. I have come to the truth that this is simply what I like to do. It is the only time of the day where I can pursue my own interests for the length of time that I choose instead of what time will allow between feedings.

I saw J.K. Rowling on Oprah the other day and discovered that she wrote Harry Potter's first book entirely by hand while her baby daughter slept next to her. She too was a single mom and did what it took to deliver her passions and still be present for her daughter all day. Well Laylah your mother does not have anything like Harry Potter within me waiting to be written, but I will stay up well past your bedtime to search for inspiration, to feed my passions and to create what will shape our lives together. I can't know now what I will think and feel when I look back on what I created during these first months of your life. Most of what I wrote when I was 15-19 years old or so is completely wretched but what strikes me about it, and is the reason I keep it still, is that I kept writing. I wrote as if I would have been surprised to feel beneath my shoulder blades and not find wings there. I wrote what I felt, what I hoped to feel, what I wanted others to feel for me. I wrote and I shared what I wrote. The writing itself is an embarrassment to me now, but the fact that I was willing to do it makes me proud. I'm not sure why I stopped writing but I thank you for filling my heart to the brim with inspiration and for being the reason I search for what Kahlil Gibran calls "the pain of too much tenderness."

Years before you were born one of my friends said to me, "It takes a lot of energy to pretend you're someone you're not." I responded that maybe that is why we're all so tired. After so much time spent behaving in a way I was told to behave, and then acting in a way I thought people I wanted to be like would act, and then not having any idea how to just be, it struck me that when you were born, being your mother did not take that same plotting and planning. I spent my entire life without you and then suddenly you were here and I could no longer imagine a life without you in it. How can that be? How can a life include nothing even remotely related to another person and upon meeting them the entire scope of your life changes unanticipatedly? My first words to you were, "Hi, I've been waiting for you." And maybe expectant parents aren't just waiting for a person to come into their lives, but perhaps we are waiting for that part of ourselves that knows exactly how to be to flourish.

This is not to say that parenting comes naturally. There are many facets of your care that I have found through google searches, advice from friends, and parenting books. It is not intuitive to know how to soothe you. I might be able to sing but as it turns out that doesn't do a whole lot of good for a brand new baby coping with an entirely foreign environment. What I mean to say is that motherhood itself -- the heartache, the depth, the intensity of it -- it is far too important to contrive. In many instances what is needed does not allow for the time it takes to process what others will think or to choose from a list of options that will make me appear in a certain way to a certain crowd. The energy we might spend trying to posture ourselves moment to moment is instead poured into the person who needs it -- and that, my beloved, is you.

I knew the night that you received your first round of shots that motherhood would surely break my heart. If I could take every shot for you and endure every pain to ensure that you would not have to, I would -- in an instant, without hesitation. Your grandparents told your Aunt Leah and I when we were children that they would step in front of a bus for us. As a child this sincere declaration was terrifying because all I heard in their statement was that they were going to get hit by a bus. The night you dealt with the side effects of the shots you received I finally understood what my parents had meant by that. The heartbreak is that they never could endure pain for us and I will never be able to endure your pain for you. Certainly there is a lot we can do as parents to provide protection and security and it is a daily effort to meet your needs in those ways, but you will learn just like everyone else does through the choices you make, the things you wish you had done differently, and the words you wish you could take back. Laylah I so want to give you the best possible upbringing that will encourage you to be an empathetic, trusting, and secure adult. My best will always be flawed but you must know that while I understand that there will be more dreams of my own to be had, more life to live once you grow up and move out of the house, more people and more love to enjoy in my life -- while I know all of that to be true, it certainly seems right now that you were the whole point of being here in the first place. You make me want to live forever just so I can have more of you.

This is love, Laylah. We grow it every day and nothing can diminish it. Unlike romantic love, no one would caution us against it or question whether or not it is indeed love. We get to choose what it looks like but it will always, unequivocally be love. And mine will forevermore be yours.

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
-- Kahlil Gibran