On the occasion (35 weeks, 4 days)

(Jamie's Note: As you can tell, I wrote this some time ago, but didn't have a chance to post it until now with editing and traveling and day to day business. I have a lot of photos and tidbits to post and will try to do at least a post a day for awhile to catch up. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!)

Dear Zeke:

On the occasion of your being eight months old, I want to write you a letter to put down some of the things that you make me think about. There are things that are probably easiest said now, most clearly felt, though it will be a long time before you read this and you may never understand me. I may also need to remember these things later. I plan to write you more letters in the upcoming months.

Our relationship and our love will go through different phases. I know there will be a natural ebb and flow to how close we will be as you grow, though I trust we will be close. We probably won't spend everyday thinking about how our relationship works either. Now that I am a parent, I have new lenses by which to see my relationships with my parents and those that have parented me. As their child, I don't know if I have always remembered the primacy of what is the sure foundation of our interactions: their love for me and their instinct to love their child. (I am learning so much these days, though nothing compared to you.)

So, please know first in everything I do or say for you is my love. My whole undivided love. A love that I would love to wrap you in every day. A love for you to find when you don't even know you need it in every corner, every pocket, every box in the closet. A love you can set down for a moment, but always come home to. An invisible thread that we can both hold onto even as it links us.

My love for you is these things and more. It wasn't love at first sight, however. It certainly wasn't that I didn't have feelings for you, but there was just something like a blank space when I saw you in the first minute of your life. There was uncertainty, some fear, and definitely the stupor of surgery and sleep deprivation. However, as these little days pass through into larger weeks and then into months, your growing presence makes me forget the past and I hardly remember any love than this one I feel now. As you grow, you fill the blank spaces in my life.

So, the first thing I want you to know is love, but there is also hope. I have many hopes for you. You're going to have to sort through them in your life and see what fits and what doesn't. I'll write about some of those hopes in my next letter to you.

Remember: I love you.

- Mommy