Letter to My Child

My Child,

I have been unsure if it is possible to love someone, something unknown. But here you are, making space by stretching the dimensions of who I thought I could be. I have yet to see your face, though you’ve sent a wordless communication with the beat of your heart: “Here I am.” My body, the only home you’ve known, is roped to you by a cord of blood and flesh, a link that blurs the line of distinction between who you are and who I am. Even so, with so little tangibly apprehended, how can I know you? Even in this dark mystery, my devotion to you is absolute.

I was not sure it was possible to know myself, let alone to love myself. Yet the person I am responds beyond knowledge to the energetic pull of you. My body follows ancient maps to navigate your arrival, written in code language that has never been seen or understood in its entirety. In the center of my body is a vortex, an energy field where you lie; it warps time and space around you, realigning my whole being. I know you by these signs: the gradual transformation of my identity, shaped now by a different definition of autonomy; the expansion of my belly and emotional body; the new protective presences I sense around us.

Wherever I go, you go. The air I breathe is yours. The nourishment I take is yours. My rest is your rest. My heartbeat thumps in time with yours. How can we inhabit this body together so comfortably, perfectly held in the lap of destiny? How can we be said to be strangers when I know and love you more than anything I have ever known or loved?

We are all born into the world this way. In time, cords are cut and rot away. Heartbeats are not in rhythm. But what could sever the phenomenological threads of such intimate familiarity, save illusion or ignorance? These conditions are temporary constructions. By illumination, or by death, we will be born again into that Awareness that has known us all since the beginning. Each of us is ever held in an infinite womb of Light, where we have always been Love, and Beloved.

My body will soon confine you in too small a space, and you will break forth into this world, my love. Remember, though, that you never leave the other world. We will always have known one another beyond familiarity, suspended together in the dark and light.

Love always,

Mother

For Theo

An audacious sunrise announced the morning of your advent, covering the city’s night sky.

Pear trees bloomed like stars, clean palettes for the veins of light,

pink and gold and purple, that heralded your coming.

Buds were beginning on the dogwood and crab apple trees;

I hurried under them, stepping on violets and wild onions, as spring birds sang.

The rolling rhythm of your descent pulled your mother down,

through pain and anger, past tears, into deep knowing.

The minutes shortened as she rocked you to Earth. Your father’s hands touched her power.

I watched her quiet solitude open a doorway for your quick arrival. 

She knew – you were close. The sun rose higher.

The time came. Finally, others understood, and your mother’s eyes burned clear

with sharp intent, a forceful gale of will that declared the moment.

Lights, hands, steady voices – a pause,

then the climb: head forward – deep groan – self and breath sacrificed – a channel stretched.

Then, rest. Your father held your mother’s hand. Then, the next push

that bulged and groaned and pulsed: blood and hope and promise, a whispered prayer

to your ancestors and descendants. At last, the zenith exertion:

the death of who your mother thought she was, the birth of who you are.

More hands, a twist of shoulder – a scream, splitting space-time,

echoing aeons of humans making their way to life –

and finally, your glorious dark hair breaking through in baptismal blood,

slippery body, plump and purple and pulsing, falling into cradle-arms.

The translucent blue cord was cut, but never the radiant rope of vibration

between you, your mother’s eyes, your father’s chest, everything.

Your cry, cosmic aria, collapsed the wave of uncertainty with sighs and joy and tears.

A flurry of flesh nestled you on your mother’s chest, in your father’s arms.

You came as divine gift of stars, strength, sunlight, stillness, spring.

In the quiet dimmed room after your birth, I looked at you and wondered, although I saw,

where you could have come from.

So perfect in your smallness, you drew a circle wide around all of us

who awaited you, fixed with love. Your cousin leapt in my womb.

You are fluent in the language of silence; you practice perfect presence.

You know what I do not remember, what I am taught again by your simplicity.

You are your mother’s hair, your father’s sternum, their eyes and skin,

your grandparents’ heart, your ancestors’ delight, your descendants’ life.

I hold you, messenger from beyond the veil – sacred guest – embodied promise.