Wednesday, May 19, 2010

You Turn One

I scrunch my forehead down and wonder--how in the world can I describe the feelings that come with your upcoming first birthday? No words could justify the magic of that day, and all the subsequent days that have come pouring out afterwards. Every time I start to write about it I get lost in daydreams of the past.....dreams for the future and that slow , sweet beautiful, painful mothers' love melts over me. I remember that feeling of the anticipation of You, a You I had never met yet knew with my soul. Waiting, as patiently as possible, which for me is not that patiently, for the sweating and pushing and the crowning and the hard work to begin, because I was never more up for a task in my life.....All while listening to the beautiful melody of the beeps and hum of the machines hooked up to me, monitoring you. You. We were One, and it was time for me to say goodbye to that. Saying goodbye to my occasionally lopsided belly from your movements, goodbye to that tap tap I would feel at night, Goodbye to the your twice daily hiccups that tickled my belly and would wake me up from napping...Goodbyes are hard, and moving on is hard....but we can choose to dwell on that, or we can glow in the excitement of the "what comes next", and it is a choice.....

I was organizing and storing your teenie baby clothes, a task that made me feel so good, so sad, so proud, so nostalgic..so many more things...all at once. Your clothes....so little. If I didn't have pictures of you in them I wouldn't believe you were ever so tiny that they fit you. I remember being pregnant- sitting on the couch watching TV and dad comes home....proud....holding a GAP bag. Inside he beams an anticipatory smile as he pulls out a onesie -he turns to show me the front..it reads..."I've Arrived." and the next thing I know I am crying at the realness of You...at the sweetness of Dad...and it was one of those perfect moments.

I remember finding out that you were a boy. Dad was out of town for my Dr. appointment. I knew that the doc should be able to tell your gender by this time and there was no way I was waiting until the next month to find out. This was a slight dilemma because I also wanted us to find out at the same time. I brought in a blank "baby shower" card and asked the doc to write his guess on it, then immediately seal it up so I couldn't peak. He said, "I'm not 100%, so please don't buy anything blue or pink based on this guess."
I picked Dad up from the airport that night and we opened this card together...


I remember finally seeing you after so many months of waiting. I can't find the right words to explain what that felt like. Adrenaline, heart skipping exhaustion, mad, crazy perfect love. You were placed in my arms and the rest of the room seemed to vanish...except for you, and me and dad. And dad and I soaked you up and took in every little tiny detail. Your ears....just like mine....your right ear was folded forward and stayed that way for months...your upper cupid bow lip like dad's...your fingers were perfect and long and purple. You had a strip of hair around the perimeter of your head. Dad called it "Mr. Whipple" hair...your eyes were a stormy ocean blue, not yet the bright and beautiful clear blue sky they are now, but beautiful still and Crayola couldn't duplicate it if they tried.
You were so big to be all folded up in my little belly, but so tiny to be outside in the big universe. You were real, and I couldn't quite believe it. It was you all along I realized. An honest to goodness baby. Suddenly all the memories of your kicks and moments of talking to you in my belly, seeing you in ultrasounds- became so much more real because it was you all along. You were long and skinny and little and perfect and ours, and we felt like we were the first people ever to feel this way about their sweet little tiny piece of perfection in the Universe.

You see, all these crazy non sequiturs are what run through my head when I review the year You came to be...and suddenly I have so much to say to you....and so much I want to teach you....and so much I want for you.......so I take a deep breath and wait. I wait, because time will bring all of these lessons and hopes floating up to the top, and we are in no hurry...just enjoying the ride as we go along......

So much Love,
Mom

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