A letter to my son on Mother's Day

Sam,

First I want to say thank you for choosing me. It's hard to explain the significance of that to you right now. My convoluted ideas about souls/energy and choosing the path that creates the person we are supposed to become are a little over your head at age 6 (despite the fact that you are simultaneously going on 3, going on 16, going on 80, going on ageless).

Anyway, thank you. Even though it's been fucking hard (yes, I just swore in a letter addressed to my 6/3/16/80/∞ year old son-- I just don't have a word that adequately replaces that one in this specific context), there is nowhere I would rather be than on the journey that is our lives together.


Let's start back at the beginning of us. I was pretty convinced that I couldn't get pregnant. In the name of honesty, you were an accident that I would not have chosen if I had been consciously choosing things. However, you were the best accident that ever could have happened. I am so happy that I wasn't making conscious choices. I knew before my period was late that you were there. I found out for sure when I had been pregnant for 16 days. I was in the bathroom at work when I found out (don't ask me why I chose to do a pregnancy test at work, there's no good explanation). I had worked at MWMC for less than 4 months. I called Terry (my friend/mama duck/charge nurse) on my work cell phone and said, "Uh... can you come to the employee bathroom and look at something?"

She said, "Uh... sure?" in a tone that said she really wasn't sure at all. I showed her the piece of plastic with lines that said there were officially two of us occupying my body. She asked, "Should I say congratulations?"

"Yeah, I think so."

I threw up for the next 7 months. All.the.time. Except that tiny window of time around 3:45 pm when I could, most days, eat and keep it down. I can't tell you how many giant burritos I ate while standing in the SCU hallway, taking report at the start of my shift.

I also felt beautiful for the first time in my life. Thank you for that.

The laboring that I got to do with you was fast and fierce. I pooped several times in the general direction of the doctor (I am adding this because I am sure you will find it funny, at least until you're old enough to find it embarrassing). I have no idea if I actually got any on Dr. Beyerlein's color coordinated shirt and tie (both were shades of cantaloupe orange), but I probably did. In under 5 hours you were out. In the first pictures of us together, you have a giant hematoma and a skin tear on your head from the vacuum thingy and my eyes are swollen almost shut from pushing for two and a half hours. I didn't feel that immediate rush of love and attachment that I have heard so many people talk about. Sure, I loved you. I loved the idea of you before I even met you. But I remember mostly thinking, "What the hell have I done?" Loving you, the person that you are, came as I got to know you. As you moved from my idea of you, into your own amazing self. Maybe I am just a slow starter. Or maybe a love this big just needed a little warm up time.

You came out with a folded ear and a worry wrinkle above your left eyebrow. I love the tiny differences that I can still see in your ears. The slight wave at the top of your right ear, the fact that it folds in exactly the same spot every time it folds, that's because of the time you were inside of me. I gave you that. It's a secret (now not-so-secret) love of mine. Like the fact that you were born without freckles and I am the only one who knows where and when your first freckle appeared. I love that too.

That worry wrinkle, I think, was a sign of things to come. You have had opportunity to worry about way more than your share of hard stuff.

I am sorry that I couldn't protect you from cancer.

I don't know what our future holds, but whatever it is-- hard, easy, both, I am happy to be walking this path with you.

This hard stuff, the stuff we have done the last couple of years, has always been part of our story. Even back at the beginning when we were blissfully ignorant. If I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, and make conscious choices... I would choose you.

Thank you again for choosing me. I am a better person for knowing you.

Mom