Dear Laundry Basket | Post 27

Dear Laundry Basket,

A year or two ago I saw a blog post a mama wrote to her son's blankie.  He had basically just, out of the blue, stopped "using" it.  She'd even try to sneak it back into his bed, but he didn't care about it.  It was no longer a signal of his trail, and where he was venturing off to... it was a signal of him leaving something behind, moving on and growing up.  I thought it was very sweet and honest, but that was about it.   My mama-friend who showed it to me, on the other hand, was a little misty and emotional while she read.

Another mama-friend wrote a short "Dear Breast Pump" letter with accompanying picture of the black machine when her babe stopped nursing.  The knee-jerk reaction I had (and apparently some other people who commented were like me) was to scrunch my face and think "...ew.  Breast pump notes?  On Instagram? Ohkay, moms."

You swear "I'll never let all I talk about be my pregnancy and my baby!"  "When I'm a mom, someone stop me if I'm posting weekly belly pictures or photo after photo of my kid during late nights... who cares?!"  But you make those promises before you've experienced it yourself, and before you get it.  Before you know how front-and-center every single part of this person's life is in your daily thoughts, your soul-searching thoughts and your conversation thoughts.  Before you know how your heart will embrace this person, much like your body does - stretched tight, filled full, naturally and without trying.  Once you're pregnant you watch your Human Making Factory do it's thing and somehow it just... happens!

And it never really leaves your mind.  What you believe and say and write about has more weight to it - "Would I teach that to my kid?  Do I really mean that?  Is that what I'd want him to hear me say?"  What you eat matters, and how you talk about your body getting all slashed and soft and uncomfortable matters, gaining weight matters - "Do I want him to believe that I was better 'back when'... before he came into my life?  When I didn't have the scars that prove he was in me?  Do I want him to hear a complaining woman, who is frustrated by... what he did to me?  Do I make food and eating so rigid and strict that it's not enjoyable anymore?  Do I make food and eating so lacking in self-control and health that it's not enjoyable anymore?  Do I talk about weight and size like I'm choosing cattle?  I don't want him to think 'Mom was beautiful because she was thin' - I want him to think 'Mom was beautiful because she was beautiful.'"  The topics are endless.  Money.  Church.  Treatment of friends and strangers.  Planning.  Education.  Personality.

But you don't realize, until you're pregnant, that getting cheese and sour cream and a side of chips at Chipotle can spark such swirling questions.  Before it was like "Eh, I should watch my calories."  Now it's like "But WHAT *IS* THE MEANING OF LIFE?!"

You make those promises before you know how many statuses and tweets and 'grams and pictures and texts and words you think of writing or speaking or posting, but you say "No, that's probably not necessary."  You make those promises before you know that you only share a sliver - maybe decimal point small - of what is in your head.  You catch yourself holding back all day long.  I appreciate my husband more than ever, and one reason certainly is that he never gets tired of talking about Baby Child either.  He happily spends a full hour discussing something like the position of our kid's spine or how excited we are to go on a family vacation with our own baby this summer.  No one else really wants to talk about that.  And it's okay.  I didn't either.

I wasn't moved to tears about blankies being forsook or breast-pumps being put away.  But now, Blue Laundry Basket, I'm experiencing the entry feelings of motherhood.  And I look at you, filled with clothes that my baby hasn't worn - most that were given to you, and I see their faces when I see that onesie or this footie-pajama or that jacket, and strawberry-sized socks for pink rice-paper feet, and blankets - so many blankets - and I get a little misty, too.   It feels funny to take perfectly clean clothes into the laundry room and wash them.  But the germs! So, I wash them.  Store germs and other people germs and hanger germs and gift box germs!  We must clean these germs.  But not with Tide.  Instead with dye-free, fragrance-free, toxin-free, baby detergent.  It takes a long time to fold an entire Blue Laundry Basket (let alone three) of baby clothes.  Because the clothes are very, very small and it takes a lot of very, very small clothes to fill a big basket, like yourself.  Small clothes like to pop back open after you fold them, too, so you have to figure out your system.  And small clothes are nearly impossible to not hold up and daydream about while you fold.

To be honest, if one of the clean blankets folded in you becomes "his favorite" and then one day, it's not anymore?  My heart will skip a sad little beat.  I know it.  He'll wear those clothes and most of the days will blur together.  But someday, in one of those outfits, something will happen, and I'll never forget it for the rest of my life.  A first smile or a roll-over or just checking him because he is still asleep...! Yes! or something.  Some of those clothes will get thrown away - stained eternally by his biggest blow-out yet.  I don't know.  I'm sure it will catch me off-guard.  In the same way I was caught off-guard with how long I sat there, staring at Blue Laundry Basket, like you were The Hope Diamond or an original Monet that had just been given to me.  The costumes for the set are in place!  We're just waiting for the actor to arrive and for the Director to say "action!" Someday those cotton cloths won't be ghost-apparel... they will warm and protect and decorate my child's body.  And, well, I guess I just had one of those moments.

I guess I underestimated what would cue my emotions and body to react so strongly.  When you dream about having a baby you don't dream about "the day he stops using his blankie!" or "the day the breast-pump is turned off for good!" or "the day you do their first load of laundry!" but when those days come they make the major-milestone list.

Thank you for being a part of the anticipation and memory of awaiting Ol' Boris Morris.  You're a good  Laundry Basket.  And I bet someday you'll be a boat or a fort or a crib or an airplane or a stage.  The best is yet to come.

With odd affection,
Mama Morris

Letters to Baby | Post 23 | Week 28

Dear Boy,

The last letter I wrote you on the blog was a long and hard one.  But a couple of weeks later, you stopped making me sick, you started showing off yourself to the world inside your growing-globe and you would do the greatest swim-flip-turns that almost tickled me.  And I could feel you.

I went from probably the closest thing to despair I've experienced - nothing prepared me for how hard two months of non-stop, intense nauseation would be.  I not only thought "I can't do this ever again.  I'm not having any more children."  I also told dad and grandma... and maybe a few others.  

But then.

Second trimester came.  And first of all, that came with relief and health and NO MORE NAUSEA.  But mostly, second trimester came with all sorts of signs of you.  Just like nothing could have prepped me for the pain of the first few months, nothing adequately prepped me for the bliss of the next few months.

I want 32 children now.  Maybe more. (wink face)

I catch myself thinking to and convincing myself that no one has ever felt this way, or experienced these things.  I must be the only one.  I just.  Can't imagine.  That.  I don't know.  A sensation so great could have been lived out before.  We're probably setting Love Records, little guy!  I know it!  But then I see a mom in a grocery store, focused on buying the cheapest Cheerios.  And her boy tries to reach out and grab a set of plastic straws hanging from the rack.  And she gasps and throws her pad of paper and pen.  Her shriek makes the whole aisle turn and the boy cry.  "Don't do that, Max! You're going to fall!"  She wraps him up and apologizes for startling home and just holds him in the aisle, kissing his cheeks.  "I just don't want you to get hurt.  And CAN'T stand in carts."  The pen rolls under the rack of colorful boxes.  She pushes her cart away, probably forgetting that she never grabbed Cheerios.

I see the older mama at the Guthrie Library with her probably Kindergarten age daughter.  I don't know who is more excited about Amelia Bedelia.  The girl has her special library tote and is so proud to reach up on the counter and slide her newly stamped books into it.  Mama is just happy.  They hold hands walking out to the car.

 I see my own mom, after chemo, asking who can take her to her middle boy's play-off game.  It's all the way in DC.  At 6:00 pm.  The traffic is going to stink.  Dad has a work meeting he can't miss, the other kids have plans they can change... but to go sit in traffic while it's dark to watch a game they'll probably lose?  No one is jumping at the offer.  Mom gets the keys to take herself.  She is not missing this game.  Her baby is playing, and she is going to be there.  My sisters and I eventually take her, and she's the loudest, cutest, fire-cracker-iest fan in the stands.  They win, and my brother scans for her face in the stands, and beelines to her to hug her after the game.

I know I'm not the first woman to be the factory and the home to another human.  I know I'm not the first wife to just lose it when her husband goes bananas over feeling all the different kinds of baby movements - "That was a HUGE one!" "Whoa, is he, like, doing boxing practice in there?" "I think he just gave me a high-five!" I know I'm not the first one to stand, undressed, in a mirror and just stare for whoknowshowlong at my midsection, tracing its new, funny shape.  I know I'm not the first fiercely protective, or blissfully in-love mother.  I know millions - maybe billions - have experienced these things before.

But you know what?  I'm the first to experience them with you, cool kid.
And that certainly makes it different.
Though motherhood has happened over and over, you've never happened before.
This is the first time.

And I don't want to ever forget the firstness and the one-time-ness of everything about you.  

Thank you for making my every-minute sweet, for giving me brand new reasons to love your father more, and thank you, even, for the swollen ankles, heartburn, leg cramps and muscle pain - it means you here, and I'm so glad.

See you soon, camper.

Love, mom.

Letters To Baby | Post 14 | 13 Weeks

Dear Baby,

There are so many things I can't wait to tell you about - how dad and I became "us", how to build forts, how to burn desserts in the oven (maybe you can teach me how not to do that), how English is a ridiculous language with lots of hard rules... but it still matters to know them, how it's fun to wear socks that don't match, how to get dad to stop tickling you (he's a softie... it's not too hard), how we come from some incredible families who have lots and lots of stories, how to shoot a lay-up, how much we love you.

But right now I want to tell you about your Parent In Heaven.  I'm learning a lot about Him lately.  Mostly because of you.  Parenthood was very important to your Father.  He wanted a Family, a Home, a Lineage, Inheritance and Heir to His riches.  He wanted children in His house.  He wanted a bride for His Son.  He wanted to deliver, adopt, name, raise and keep His own.  Don't be confused with "want" and "need."  He didn't need a family.  He didn't need to go through the effort of making, providing for, having, feeding, caring, helping, sustaining, teaching, suffering for, bailing, holding, planning for, giving to and loving a motley crew of kids.  But He has this crazy, large, good heart that wanted that.  Children and family weren't a burden or problem, they were the goal and the prize.  Being their Father was what He decided would celebrate and display and express His Goodness the best.  

our favorite picture of you ;)

"He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world... In love He predestined us for adoption as sons."  "You shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip, and bounced upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you." "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. I taught them to walk; I took them up by their arms, I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I bent down to them and fed them." "We cry, 'Abba! Father!'  We are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God." "I am jealous for them with great jealousy... the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets. It is marvelous." "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven." "In my Father's house are many rooms... I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you, that where I am you may be also.""The Father's name is written on their foreheads."  "He will delight in prospering you." "Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' it shall be said to them, 'Children of the living God.'" 

It's not something that can be escaped when you read His Story.  This Father wanted to be known for His grace, and He wanted to be generous to and love us.  The people.  You're a person, little one.  You're alive.  Before there was a physical world and even time, The Father decided that He was going to make you and give you a soul, a body and life.  He decided that you would start life inside my body, through the life of your dad and I, and that of all the people who ever lived, you would be dearest to our souls.  He made these arrangements well before dad or I were alive.   We were "visions in His mind" and He knew us, and our parents, and grandparents, and entire family history way back at the very beginning.  He chose to make us because He wanted us.  He wanted to make you.

it's brilliant fun to "research" and think about getting ready for you.

I don't know how long your life on earth will be, but because you are a person with a soul, you will live forever.  Souls don't die.  I don't have a promise that I'll get to hold you in my arms (I pray everyday that I will be able to, however.)  I don't get to know if you'll live on earth for one day, or six days, or six years or 106 years.  But I do know this: you are God's joy and He has decide to give you to us.  So humanly speaking, you are ours.  You are a part of our family, our home and our heritage.  Dad and I are preparing a place for you. We are getting ready to provide for your needs.  We love to dream about bouncing, comforting and feeding you.  We try to imagine what you'll sound like when you call to us.  We wonder how soon you'll walk, if you'll be able to walk?  It is marvelous to picture a world where you can play in the city streets safely - because all the "dangers" of this place make me want to protect you forever and always.  We can't wait to do good for you and to prosper you.  You are "our people," or rather "our person."  And we will name you, keep you and love you.  We want you, and you are not a burden or problem to us.

Though, in order to have you, my body has to go through significant pain.  Your tiny body inside me causes my body to hurt, struggle and grow exhausted.  I've never spent so much time physically hurting like I have being pregnant with you.  Food, water, and vitamins are my daily "enemy."  I'm afraid of them, and afraid of what they might do to me.  Being hungry is also an "enemy" - a more predictable one, however.  I KNOW I will hurt - badly - if I don't eat.  So I have to try.  Nausea and throwing-up and a host of other special treats are common to me.  I hardly remember what it feels like to not "feel sick" or "feel queasy."  The physical toll directly impacts the emotional and mental part of me.  Discouragement, comparison to other newlyweds or mothers, fear, weariness and complaining come easily.  "God, I can't take this anymore.  Please make it stop.  I hurt so bad.  And I'm tired of having a sour stomach.  I'm tired of being able to do so little.  I'm tired of throwing-up my entire meal, out of my mouth and nose, and wetting my pants in the process - every time - because I'm so out of control of my body.  I'm tired of smelling throw-up for hours after the whole process because I can't figure out how to clean my nose out.  I'm tired of feeling SO fat.  I'm tired of canceling plans because I just can't do it.  I'm tired of being afraid of cars, sitting up straight and night.  I'm tired of feeling so boring.  And useless."  Oh, it comes so easily, little baby.  But here is where you are changing my life, for always and ever.  You are making this sink in: The Father's Son, Jesus, spent His life and body on me.  

He left beautiful bliss and came to hurt for me.  His body was destroyed.  He hurt, He cried tears of pain, He bled, He tasted sour vile, He was hungry, He felt sick, He was exhausted, He ached, He even asked The Father to remove the weight of the pain - if there was anyway possible, and yet, "like a lamb led to the slaughter, He opened not His mouth."  He didn't complain.  He didn't turn back.  He didn't lose sight of the goal: life for The Children of The Father, a way for them to come Home.   For the joy set before Him, He endured.  For me, He endured.  And after He championed the deepest pain of all - the sting of death - He proved His victory by rising from death, never to die again.  He did it because He loved us.  Because He loved me.  Because He loved you.  He was thinking of you - the joy of you, the worth of you, the jealousy He had for you - when He suffered.

And, sweet baby, I don't know if I could relate my heart to you.  I don't know if I can give accurate account of how I feel when I think of you.  You'll never understand, unless you one day experience it yourself, why I had to cry when I saw you on a screen in a doctor's office - with arms, legs, a torso, a head (with eyes, nose and mouth) and a large beating heart.  I can't explain to you why I started to cry again when I typed that last sentence.  Watching you for less than a minute move your body, bat your arms, kick your legs and frantically "swim" and spin and dance away gave me joy I have never known.  Dad and I have that image of you emblazoned on our minds.  We were undone and loved you in that moment more than we knew we could ever love anyone.  The Father knew I needed to see you that cold morning.  He knew how it would capture my heart forever.  He know how the pain I've felt and the extra work your dad has taken-up absolutely pale in comparison to the bliss of being your mom and dad.  

It is so worth it.  I would endure anything for you.  I would die to give you life.  Dad would too.  I love you. I love you.  I love you.  I would hurt and be nauseous for the rest of my life, if it meant I got to have you.  We wanted you before you existed, but now that you are here and "with us" and growing, our hearts race as we look forward to knowing and loving you face-to-face.  I wouldn't - I couldn't! - give up on you.  And what absolutely hurts my head and makes these eyes of mine dampen all over again is the realization that what I feel towards you is only a sparkle of the way The Father feels about me.  I was worth it to Him. He would endure anything for me - He would die for me.  He loves me.  He wants me and His pulse quickens when He thinks about me.  He longs for me.  He runs to me like a wealthy Jewish father who was snubbed and disrespected by his offensive son, who considered his father as good as dead and wasted his good inheritance on filth and misery.  The father ran to him!  He hugged and rejoiced and blessed him!  He celebrated, gave that naughty boy even more good and beauty, and announced a day of feasting! He reminded him "All that I have is yours!" His heart was full because His child was home.

Becoming a parent is not right we have or a decision we made, but it's a gift we've been given.  We get to share in the character of God by experiencing parenthood.  We get to understand in new colorful layers the sweet adoration a parent has for a child.   We are learning that our Father genuinely and happily enjoys us, that we bless His heart when He gets to bless us.  Not everyone gets to experience this.  We consider ourselves supremely blessed by the Gift-Giver and the Gift.  

I'll end with the scripture that is most-prized to me these days:

"When a woman has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, 

for joy that a human being has been born into the world. 

So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, 

and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. 

Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He will give it to you. 

Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full."

Thank you for giving us the joy of giving ourselves to you.  We wait with baited breath and ever-growing love as we anticipate sharing with you the Story of Our God, and our very lives (I'm also excited about dressing you up in tiny, precious clothes.  You have NO idea.) You are very dear to us, tiny dancer.  And we long to bring you home.

With all our hearts and souls,
Dad and Mamma