Dear Small Boy,
It’s Mother’s Day, and you have the hiccups.
Your daddy and brother have gone out on a mission to fetch breakfast I think? We are waiting quietly in bed for their return.
Hic, hic, hic, on the bottom left of my belly. Hic, stretch, hic.
Hic, hic, hic, on the bottom left of my belly. Hic, stretch, hic.
You
are the last baby I’ll carry in my belly, this I’m certain of. As
interesting and extraordinary a privilege it is to create a human in my body, I do not
take well to this work. So as I struggle to see this through to the end,
to you joining us on the outside, I seek hard for moments with you to
treasure. I mine for them and clutch tightly to any sparkle I find in
the damp and the dark.
Your
brother and daddy are home, I hear the clump, clump of the
disintegrating rain boots your brother insists on wearing in 20 degree
weather, because he can put them on himself, and he likes to “stomp”.
The table and chairs scrape over the floor above me. They burst into the
bedroom and, trying to carry everything, Daddy spills coffee all over
the flowers and the floor. They have brought all the wrong food; runny
eggs and sauce on the sandwich, raisins in the chocolate, and not a
waffle in sight. But the latte is good and I eat three servings of side
potatoes and decide to ignore the coffee stain seeping through the
sheet into the mattress.
We have packed up all of the vases, so I come upstairs to find your daddy has put the flowers into an empty coke can. This is our
last week in the house I grew you in that you’ll never see. You and I
carefully navigate the stacks of boxes together. Your brother asks for
the “biggest squeeze in the world” while we snuggle on our crumb-y
couch, and we give it to him. The four of us are getting ready for
something new.
-Your Mother
-Your Mother