An open letter to my 3-year old son

Dear Asa,

My whole life before you, I was looking forward to the next phase. I loved falling in love and thinking about marriage… about the vagaries of children, and then the long wavy gray hair and romantic summers full of reading and painting that come with an empty nest. The next thing was always more exciting than what I had. When I met your father, things felt novel, but also the same in my excited desire to see what’s next. We dated and learned about each other. We got married. We thought “let’s try to have a baby” and a few weeks later, unbeknownst to us, we were headed for parenthood.

I found out I was pregnant, and I scheduled an ultrasound. You looked like a fluttering grain of rice. The nurse said, “that’s the heartbeat.” and again, I couldn’t wait to meet you. Always looking forward.

I kept working as a professor at a college in the city. I loved it, and it was exhausting. My students were excited for me. They told me to promise them pictures when you arrived.

I started to feel you move. My hormones made me cry during touching Subaru commercials. When cramps and backaches and mood swings wore me out, I would whine through teary eyes, “I just want to meet my baby.” I thought once you were out, when I saw your face, I would know you.

Then you arrived and I stared at your face. I thought, ‘I still don’t know anything about this person…’ …I was excited to get to know you. I imagined your first words, the first day of school, dancing at your wedding (and immediately reminding myself not to pressure you toward anything, including marriage), and I cried. Actually, I was trying to make myself cry, and thinking about the future was the only thing that worked. I had heard about other mother’s experiences with childbirth and saw their strained, tear-covered faces… their overwhelming joy, and I thought I was doing something wrong for not feeling that. After the pain and the pressure was gone, and you were out, I just felt content. I smiled a huge smile but no tears came. I just looked at your gorgeous face and thought, “this is great.” Nothing felt very different.

Your first few months were hard, but I was with you all the time. You were colicky and needed attention, and motion, constantly. I cried sometimes from exhaustion… and frustration… and I loved you more than anything I had ever seen before. My boss called to tell me I might be laid off. It would be the first time since I was 16 (save sabbatical and maternity leave) that I would be unemployed. It crushed me. My identity was so wrapped up in my artwork, my professional life, and who I was working to be.

They laid me off. And I cried. And then I said “fuck it” and started collecting unemployment, and I got PAID to stay home with you.

I spent so much time with you that I started to question who I was and if I had built everything up to this point for no reason. I didn’t feel regret, but I felt exhausted and empty and confused about who I was in the world.

So many people that I know muse about the newborn days with their kids, and they look at their toddlers or preteens and wish they could go back in time. And I understand that now… to a point.

I HATED nostalgia growing up. I deliberately avoided things that made me feel like I was younger… more awkward… reminded me of the mistakes I made in the past. I still don’t like looking back, especially not longingly, but when I notice myself looking forward, I try to stop in my tracks. Because, this life is possibly the only one we will get together and I am not trying to rush through it.

There is just this weird thing that happens when you become a parent. You start to obsess about what you have done and whether it was right, and you start to obsess about what the future will be like for your child, and everything you have done and everything-that-will-be sometimes seems wrong. But the moment we are in right now almost never feels wrong…

And this whole experience has burned the house that I built to the ground. And in its place a thousand saplings are taking root. The foundation of the house… the wreckage… was necessary for the next incarnation. And I don’t rise like a victorious phoenix, but I stretch like a thousand yawning seedlings, seeing everything as new, and nothing as it was. You have destroyed me- remade me. I have different fears now. My relentless forward momentum has shifted to a desperate dragging foot. I don’t daydream about the future or pine for the past, but there is something in this moment that I need, that I am addicted to, and that I am terrified of losing.

It IS terrifying, like most awesome things are, but it is also incredibly freeing. To know that what I do for a career, or what I create and call “art” doesn’t define me any more than the love I have for you (and your little sister), or the books I like to read, or the conversations I have with people. I define me. I know myself more now, through losing everything that I thought that I had and replacing it with love. And for that I say, thank you.