Little Pleasures

[This piece is a sort of prose-fiction that just quite seriously popped into my head almost fully written. There have been like ZERO changes between this and the first draft. Not sure where it came from, and the letter form is something I’ve never done with fiction. Taking a big leap here…hopefully it has worked]

Unborn…

I press my hands upon my stomach and feel you gently kick me. It’s almost as though you know that on this lazy, warm Sunday morning I am thinking of you.

Of course there is hardly a time, since I knew of your existence that you are not present in my thoughts. I never understood it when my mother told me that no matter what I would be doing, on some level my mind would be focused on you. Now I know exactly what she meant. In these past 7 months you have taken shape, growing and moving and I have never been able to take my mind off it. 

It’s a frightening thought that in less than a couple of months, you will no longer be inside me, where I’m assured of your safety, but out here in this world. In my arms, and I will be a mother. Your mother. I will be wholly responsible for you and what becomes of you. 

I never wanted to be a mother. Well not that I never wanted children, it’s just that a family and marriage were never my first priority. I was young and headstrong and rebellious. I wanted to travel and make a change. And even when I fell dizzyingly in love, and found a ring on my finger – I still planned that my life wouldn’t be a quiet one. It would be filled with explosion and changes.

And then one rainy evening, after two years of marriage, a sweet doctor; the same man who had handled my bloody knees and broken bones as a child; gave me the news that you existed. There was someone within me who would always be an inherent and unchangeable part of me. 

The euphoria lasted a day. The excited calls, the screaming of my mother, your fathers face lit up like he swallowed the sun. Even though we were young with dreams and we had never talked about starting a family – you were welcomed with open arms from the second we heard about your existence. You were loved from the beginning.

It wasn’t until the next afternoon when the crushing panic hit me. I had never dreamed about motherhood, and suddenly it was all I could think about. What would I do once you came? How could I ensure you would be a healthy as possible? Would all the partying – the tequila soaked nights, the joints rolled under the moon, the fast food lived on for months – all the characteristics of my late teens and early twenties come to haunt me? Would I be a good mother? Was I ready to deal with the fate of another person?

I have never stopped worrying, and based on what everyone tells me I don’t ever think I will. But now amidst the worrying I can’t wait for your arrival. I can’t wait for you to take your first steps. Your first smile. I can’t wait to hold you in my arms.

When I was young, I dreamed of ways to change the world. My chance is finally here. You will be the change I make in this world. You will be everything I dreamed. And I will love you with an intensity I never thought possible.