To My Child - 2-8-09

To my child:

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I’ve been thinking for some time now, in the thick of my loss, my lost belief in the marriage and family I hunger for, of ironically beginning a journal for you, a chronicle of all I have to teach you. The whole of my life has been marked by my efforts to learn, grow, mature, experience, all for you. All my choices have been made to build something of worth for you. My heirloom gift to you, my hope chest of sorts, my legacy. And when I began thinking of writing down all the thoughts I’ve collected for you, I found actually that of all the lessons I have to teach you that have been packed away inside me, carefully preserved in tissue paper for you to open them, the first lesson was the hardest to choose. When I considered how I would begin this work, I couldn’t think how I should start. Which lesson, which experience, which battle-scarred sliver of wisdom should set the tone for this? What should you learn first that would prepare you to receive all I have to offer you with eager, open hands?

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And finally, tonight, it came to me. It is this.

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I love you. I have always loved you. When I was still a child, I viewed my dolls not as toys but as a representation of you. I have always known you, always held you, been waiting for you with such breaking hunger. I thirst for the first sight of your face. I long to know you name. You have been nestled inside me since I first came to consciousness in this life. All my life has had one ultimate purpose: to bring you to consciousness as I was, to stay close by your side and teach you all I can. To equip you with the tools of survival and the tools of your destiny.

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I love you enough to stay close, and I love you enough to move away. I love you enough to say no, and enough to say yes. I love you enough to put behind me my hard-earned fearlessness and embrace fear for you.

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You are worth all you ask of me. You are worthy of my greatest efforts and my deepest truths. I am the earth from which you spring but you are the light that keeps me fertile and growing. All I have has been ordered and laid at your feet to use as you need.

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I have so much to teach you and so much to give. But all of that is ashes if you do not know, do not believe to your very core that I love you with all that I am. I am your mother, no one else’s. You are of my body and soul. I love you.