Dear Baby #2

You are alive yet veiled from my view. Because of this, it’s difficult to develop a relationship with you. It feels one-sided. I talk to you, draw near to you, and think about you and you don’t respond. You can’t.

Occasionally, I glimpse your reality. You bump and stretch inside of your mother and it is exhilarating. I cherish the moments, however fleeting, when doubt and distraction are effaced and all that remains is the stark truth that you are real, alive and on your way. I also experience you through grainy ultrasound images. I see your foreign and unfamiliar body wrapped in warmth and safety. It’s only a rendering but I hold fast because it is all I have.

I love these times when the veil between us seems paper thin. They are a lighthouse in a raging sea – a beacon of hope cutting through the despair. They are a brief taste of the abysses of joy that await us. Despite my fiercest longings, however, they drift into foggy memory.

While such moments are good, my everyday experiences of you rely on little more than knowledge that you simply exist. Not an easy task to daily bend my soul to something that I can’t hold. My affections meander as my days grind. Your gravity is strong, though, and despite my listless wanderings you whisper to my soul, calling me back. Somehow, you bind my thoughts to your existence.

I wonder about your characteristics. How will you sound? Will your hair be curly?  How will I feel when I first see your face? My emotions swell as I sink into the moment when we meet, hold, talk and laugh. August 23rd feels like an eternity, a myth. How much more difficult if I never knew the day or time of your arrival.

Ever near yet so far, your presence is the anvil upon which I am shaped. How can something invisible to the naked eye have such sway? The reality of your unseen existence consumes my days. I fetch water, cook dinner, run a business while working a full time job, give foot rubs and attempt to make your mother as comfortable as possible. I wake early and work late.

My days careen into the unexpected and coast in silence, yet your heart still beats. My feelings soar and plummet, but you remain constant. You are ever present, calling my mind away from my busy life to revel in the joy of beholding your face.

I have been told that even in the reality of physical separation, we can build our relationship. So I talk to you through the veil of your mother’s flesh. I won’t hear any words in return, but that is ok.  When we finally meet, we won’t be strangers. You will recognize my voice and I will hold you in my arms.

You will return my hold and as I look into your eyes I will marvel.

I eagerly await this day.

Love,

Dad