Letter to my daughter

Dear Maya,

You are not born yet. You are here, in the world, but also not quite in the world because you are still forming in my belly. I am large with you even though you haven’t quite arrived. My little girl.

I have already grieved for you - grieved that you will need surgery in the first few months of your life, and that you wouldn’t be born physically perfect. Now I have finished my grieving and I know that it is okay - it’s okay that you won’t be physically perfect. Nobody is. Not the most beautiful supermodel, not the prettiest newborn, not anybody. It is our flaws that make us unique and that make us who we are, and we all have them - a mole, a birthmark, a funny nose, knobbly knees. You will have a split lip, one of many little imperfections that will make you you, that will make you Maya and will make us love you even more. In a way, though, you are lucky, because you’ll get your imperfection fixed right away. If only that plastic surgeon would then turn his attention to my flabby mama-belly after he fixes you…

When I had your big brother, I felt a little sad that he would not know us as we were before he changed us, and I feel this way again. The family we are right now will one day be strangers to us. We will change to accomodate you into our lives, and that will change us permanently, irrevocably. You won’t know the Ben that is an only child - you will know the Ben that is your big brother. And you’ll never know our family as a three-some, because your presence will make us four.

If only you knew how we anticipate you! How your big brother crawls into my bed every morning and wakes us up by rubbing my belly and talking to “his baby.” How your daddy waits patiently, his hand held steady on my huge tummy, to feel you kick. How, whenever you give us a good kick, we both shout, “Hi-ya!” because you are our bad-ass karate kicker.

We can’t wait for you to appear. We bought furniture for your room, and gifts have already begun to arrive in anticipation of your entrance to this world. Your grandma has already sewn you half a dozen blankets. Your name has already been much-discussed by the family (your grandpa protested “Rose,” by the way, which you should hold against him because I’m sure you’ll have him twisted around your little finger in about a millisecond). I wonder what you will look like - will you have your daddy’s big, chocolate-drop eyes? Your Aunt Susie’s curly hair? Your mama’s upturned nose?

Let me tell you a secret — I was always a tiny bit scared to have a little girl. With your big brother, I was just scared to have a baby. Babies were unknown territory. And I was a little relieved that he was a boy, because I wasn’t quite ready to face the questions a little girl might have about life. What questions? you may wonder (eventually). Well, questions like how to be, how to become your fullest self without sacrificing your family, how to be a woman in a man’s world, the right time to challenge the status quo and the right time to back down. Questions like whether or not Barbie was okay to play with or if pink was a necessary evil. I wasn’t ready to answer those questions back then. Now I know the answers: that Barbie isn’t real and pink is just another color. That it’s not up to me, or my children, to change the status quo unless we feel like we need to for our own sakes. That a little sacrifice is all right, as long as we don’t lose ourselves in the bargain. I’m ready for you, little girl. I’ve answered my own questions. Now I’m ready for the real ones — yours.

I think of Kahlil Gibran’s words:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
for their thoughts dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

A lot of my old fears are gone — fear that my babies wouldn’t love me, for example. Or that I wouldn’t love them. This now seems so foolish as to be ludicrous. But new fears have come to the forefront, as I will now be your example, as your grandmother was mine. But we have many examples, and if I have learned anything from your big brother, it is that children are truly not an extension of ourselves. Each child is his or her own person. You are your own person too, even if all you can do right now is swim and kick and suck your thumb. And that is really exciting, because I get the chance to really know you — what a privilege! I get to see you struggle and succeed and fail and love and throw fits in supermarkets. I get to see you learn and grow and grow up (hopefully). You are a miracle. I got to help God make you and I am grateful.

It might be a tiny bit silly to write to you now, since you aren’t quite here yet, but I just wanted to let you know that I love you already.

Until we meet for the first time,

Mama