Letter to Our Baby

Click, clack, "So my story begins..."

Dear Baby,

As the clock ticks out the last hours of 2017, your Daddy and I are more excited than we’ve ever been for the turn of a new year. Why? Because this is the year and the expected month that YOU will be born, and we will become parents for the first time!

We’ve been patiently waiting to meet you, and now that the day draws close at hand, my heart is overflowing with love, and I want to tell you how it all came to be.

When your father and I went unto the Altar of God and exchanged vows before the priest and family and friends, we hoped it would only be a matter of time before God would ask of us this special favor: to be your parents.

Nine months later, in the spring, we found out I was pregnant with you, and were amazed. In fact, we could hardly believe the good news! I took the pregnancy twice just to be absolutely sure, and at noon, after the second test, I texted Daddy at work:

“The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary…”

And he texted back, finishing the opening line of the Angelus prayer:

“…and she conceived by the Holy Spirit.”

I told him that test #2 was unmistakably obvious: POSITIVE!

It took hours, days and weeks for the news to sink in, because the miracle of your life, which we have so desired and prayed for, we’ve been told will change everything!

The joyous news of our pregnancy, however, came on the heels of very sad news. On May 10^th, 2017, your great granddaddy, my maternal grandpa, Ralph, breathed his last in the nursing home. As our whole family went into grieving for Grandpa and the loving, gentle, faithful man he was, it was less than a week later that I learned that a new life had been conceived and given us. So, before we even told anyone else, I felt that Grandpa was already “in on the secret” and that perhaps, in some mysterious way, his passing had made room for a new member on our family tree, someone he’ll not know here on earth but who shares his blood line.

While our hearts were heavy, our tears budded into hope. For the same God who takes life, gives life, and calls us to be with Him for eternity. He holds the world in His hands; He created the stars in the firmament of the heavens, and He counts every one of the hairs on our heads (Luke 12:7).

Therefore, we announced the news of you to all our parents when we were home for the funeral. Daddy dropped clues like “Here’s an extra hamburger for Christina now that she’s eating for two!” which elicited a look of astonishment from the grandparents. And “Stay healthy, Dad, because you’re going to be a grandpa again!” … “The family tree is growing!” Seeing our parents’ faces light up with surprise and the laughter that followed, I found comfort in knowing that “There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens. A time to give birth, and a time to die…A time to mourn, and a time to dance” (Eccl. 3:1-4).

As you grew little by little each day, Mommy’s body began to change, and she began to experience a real care and concern for you, wanting to protect you. We began to imagine what you will look like and who you will be. Mommy read books and tracked your size as you grew from the size of a pea to a blueberry, a walnut, a lemon, an avocado, a cantaloupe…

The first trimester was challenging. Mommy felt queasy and tired by day’s end, due to your rapid growth the first weeks. There were some close calls on hot summer days when I nearly fainted in public and had to remember to carry a fan with me when leaving the house. The second trimester though brought bliss. I felt a rebound of energy and motivation and good enough to do just about everything, including flying home to the Midwest and having a family baby shower for you, going on adventures with Daddy, nesting and preparing our house for a little child.

Family and friends have been sending gifts for you, such as clothes and diapers and toys, so much so that it has felt like a very long Christmas at our house! So many boxes have arrived that our U.S. Postal Service lady is aware of your upcoming birth!

Then came the third trimester, the final haul, with sleepless nights and diabetic monitoring. My belly bump has grown quite firm and full, with you squirming and stretching your fingers and toes, and swimming around like a little beluga whale. All your moving around tells me that you are healthy and strong! And the challenges of these final weeks are preparing me with the incentive to push you out into the world! For that is what by God’s grace was meant to happen all along: to birth you, my little image, into the world to be a sign of the faithful, fruitful love between Daddy and Mommy. You will be your own unique individual who the Lord loves and has a beautiful plan for your future. I am just privileged to nurture and carry you inside of me for a brief time of your life. After nine months of you being inside of Mommy, coming and going with us everywhere we go, Daddy talks to you and says he can’t wait to have “his turn” to hold you and feel your skin, and smell you, and carry you around!

We have felt the honor of parenting already when choosing your name, one for if you are a girl and another if you are a boy. This name, by which you can be known and loved, is a name whose meaning is significant to us and expresses our hopes for you! We love you so much already and always will! Your arrival will be one of the most joyous days of our lives.

With full and hopeful hearts,

Mommy and Daddy

The Vitamin Lady

Once upon a time, I had wild job resume that spanned from vitamin saleswoman, restaurant waitress, grocery clerk, office secretary, pioneer woman and fashionable mother with purse and dollies. Let's consider vitamin lady, for example, an occupation I started with the help of my cousins. We’d load our backpacks with empty vitamin bottles our mothers gave us and then travel around town (or the living room) to meet with clients and advise them on which supplements they should buy to solve their ailments. An unusual childhood invention, I know, and telling of the days when our parents were discovering the alternative health field. I'll admit I did eat some of that paper that we stuffed in the bottles as pretend vitamins. I never died yet from the ink. And I learned that while good things come in a bottle, our mothers were sacrificing and giving us so much in those days to feed our hungry little bodies, imaginations and souls. 

Today I am grateful for my upbringing and my mother’s mothering. The older I get, the more I live by her wisdom and am blessed by it. So here’s an ode to her, and to all like her, who have mothered or (fathered) us through to who we are today.

Without cable or video games at our house, before the days of laptops and technological devices of all shapes and sizes, we spent the hours playing, pretending and helping around the house, where I first learned creative thinking, team work and innovation. Skills I still use today. We had a quiet home, one where the silences were not muffled by television or attention-diverting devices but one in which we felt comfortable being with one another in the silence. Here ideas flowed. And we were present to one another.

Not being given all the toys I wanted but just enough inspired me to experiment in making my own versions of them with household items like cardboard, recycling things into other things, cutting out food pictures from magazines for playing restaurant or grocery store. Truly, the lessons have paid off, as this showed me into adulthood that I could dream, create and live the life I imagined, and be happy, even with little resources.

You took me to church. You showed me a way of holiness at home, too, through prayer and example. Your longing for God overflowed and touched me and drew me into the heart of the Lover that Jesus is, as you sought Him with your womanly heart.

You raised me up with beautiful music, introduced me to classical works and different composers, and signed me up for piano lessons. You encouraged my musical development and praised every song I played on the piano. Then you encouraged me to take ballroom dancing lessons and express music with my very being! And these things still lift me up today, giving me joy.

Like magic, you knew how to cure my ailments with natural remedies but also with a healing touch of your hand, a prayer said over me, a soft lullaby like “Tell Me Why the Stars Do Shine,” a bedtime story read from just the dim light of the hallway, and the sign of the cross on my forehead as you wished me a “Goodnight.”

There’s so much more, but this is just to say, “Thanks, Mom,” for all you've done and continue to do for your children. 

To ponder, what positive memories do you have of your upbringing?