Dear You,

Any day now.

Any day now, some scenario will play out. My water will break or I will feel the stab of a no-nonsense contraction. And I will know. You are coming. Almost here. And here, this world we live in, this home that holds us, is a good and warm and silly space. I think – no, know – you will love it.

But for now you are inside me, a big bundle if the predictions are right. I will show you the picture above one day and I will tell you – as much as I can remember – what it was like to carry you, to feel you dance within, to anticipate unique and ineffable love. I will point out your cheeks, delectably chubby even at 35 weeks gestation. I will trace the curl of your little lip. Your slumbering eyes. I will say it: That was you. That is you.

For now though, we wait. For the time to come. For the moment to arrive. For you to decide. I am excited and scared and busting with joy. I am a mixture of profound impatience and the most exquisite surrender. This is not up to me.

I want you to know something. It is something I will tell you again and again. Probably too much. That something? I love you.

Already. Impossibly. Always.

Any day now.

Love,

Mommy

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Are you a patient person? How do you deal with the waiting game? If you have children, how have you handled the final days/weeks of your pregnancy/pregnancies?

“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”

Oscar Wilde

We live in a material world. A world where wealth is sought and celebrated. A world where things are bought and brandished. A world where heads and homes grow cluttered with stuff. A world where we whisper in unison one ominous word: More.

But there are things we can’t buy. Things other than houses and handbags, gadgets and glories, opportunities and oysters. One thing we can’t buy: The past.

The past.

What happened to us. Where we’ve been. Pages flipped. A story lived.

It’s out of our hands, but it’s in our heads. Who we once were, the decisions we once made, the people we’ve known and loved and hurt and lost, the mistakes we made, those we should have made, the years we’ve had.

The past is its own pile of riches, a complicated treasure we can sift through and learn from. Gems glistening and ephemeral, slipping through our fingers like sand. Here. Always here. Hovering and humming. But also gone.

There are things we can’t buy back. Priceless things. Like our pasts.

Like the innocence of little girls who make porcelain piggy and hippo banks. Little girls who know many words, so many, but not words like rich and past and enough.

They drop coins in. Clink. Clink. Smile. Collecting pennies. Collecting wisdom. Collecting life.

Collecting pasts.

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How often do you think of your past? Do you ever wish you could go back and do things differently? Do you think our culture is overly obsessed with material wealth, with financial richness? What would you pay to regain a pinch of childhood innocence?

Bedtime. Husband and I are with the girls in their purple room. We negotiate pajamas and toothbrushes and storybooks. Per usual, the girls bide their time, running around, concocting fictional games to delay our nightly rituals.

We make soft threats. If you don’t put your pajamas on now, there will be no stories before bed.

Toddler ignores this and races to the corner of her room. Pulls her plastic laptop from the shelf. She brings it over, places it on the foot of her bed, and pries it open.

I need to order dinner, she says.

Uh oh. I look at Husband. We both crack a silent smile.

But your kitchen is over there, Husband says, pointing to their elaborate red wood play kitchen in the corner. You can make some dinner over there.

Not to be deterred, Toddler stays focused on the screen and pounds away at the keyboard. What do you want to eat tonight? She asks.

Oh boy. Here we go. As I have mentioned once or twice on this blog, I am not a good cook. And when I say I am not a good cook, I mean I do not cook. At all. Ever. This is terrible. I know. Worse than terrible. Most nights of the week, Husband and I pry open that laptop, peruse online menus, and order dinner. And then dinner arrives in a jiffy and we eat it.

Guess the kiddos have been watching. And listening.

Finally, we separate Toddler from her laptop and convince her to brush her teeth. But then. Out of the corner of my eye, I see it. Baby sitting on the floor. Hunched over the same plastic computer in a fit of intense concentration.

I need to order some food, Baby says. What do you guys want to drink?

Oh goodness. It’s time to get my act together, huh?

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Do you ever think about how your behaviors influence your children or how your parents’ patterns influenced you? How often do you cook? What are some habits of yours of which you are less than proud? Have I already produced a pair of individuals who will subsist wholly on takeout or is there still hope?

Toddler. She’s had a few rough days at school. Days smudged with uncharacteristic tears. It’s all a guessing game of course, but my hunch? She knows what’s coming. A tiny creature that will necessarily take me away. And I get it. I am having a hard time with the change that’s ahead. I can’t imagine how it would be if I were four.

I pick her up from school. And instead of whisking her home so I can get some writing done, I ask: Do you want to have lunch with Mommy?

Her eyes light up.

And soon. We are across from each other in a small booth. She munches her dinosaur nuggets as I tuck into my grilled cheese. She talks and talks. About her day. About school. About the silly kids in her class. And when we are finished, we walk. Along the city streets, toward home.

We stop in a little boutique. I find some brightly-colored burp cloths for the baby. Toddler spots it. The tutu. It’s mint green and enormous. And then we hear it: That comes in a bunch of colors.

Even purple? I ask.

It comes in purple. Her favorite color in the world. And soon. My little girl is wearing it. The vast purple tutu. Over her school clothes. With her beloved dinosaur hat. I don’t think twice. I buy it.

And she wears it home. Skipping on concrete. Leaving a splendid shadow. I jog to keep up.

She pauses to climb the mountains of soiled snow. Be careful, I whisper.

And she walks. Up ahead. Twirling in purple away from me. A beautiful and improbable image.

I catch up. And I tell her to look at me. To listen to me. I tell her that I love her new purple tutu. And then I tell her something she hears all the time. But on this day, on our afternoon, our just us afternoon, I think she really hears it.

I love you. You.

Her smile is grand. Glorious. As grand and glorious as that regal purple skirt that shimmies as she runs from me.

And I watch her go, trotting behind. And something occurs to me. Something simple and profound.

She needed this afternoon. And I did too.

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Are you good about spending one-on-one time with your little creatures or other loved ones? Has it ever occurred to you that you need them as much as they need you? Do you recall meaningful time spent one-on-one with your mother or father?  Do you think there is anything wrong with the wildly impulsive purchase of a purple tutu?

Maternity leave, that is.

One of these days, she is going to arrive. And, for the third time, our good world will tumble upside down. There will be little sleep and much love and plenty of change. Life as we know it will be history. We will suddenly, exquisitely, be a family of five.

I can’t wait.

But I can. Because though we are 99% ready for her arrival – in terms of physical preparations – I am not nearly that ready mentally. Try as I might, it is hard for me to wrap my mind around being a mother to three tiny creatures who need me, and profoundly, in different ways. Try as I might, I can’t figure out something else: What I should do writing-wise once she arrives.

Husband reminds me over and over of one thing, one impossibly true thing. If you were still at the law firm, you would be counting down and the minute she arrives, you would be out of there for many months. You would not do a stitch of work during those months. And you would not look back. Wow, is he right. I would – shocker – take a maternity leave. Likely for three to six months.

But now. I am my own boss. I’m the one who dictates how much I work, and when. I am the policy maker in this little company of one. And suddenly things aren’t so clear. I have debated this endlessly.

• Maybe I should just keep posting on my regular schedule as it will give me a lovely literary diversion from diaper land.
  
• Maybe I should stick to a less frequent schedule – three times a week, or even once a week.
  
• Maybe I should press pause completely and immerse myself completely in my new child, in this new incarnation of my family, in my new world.
  

You will notice that the three options above all contain one word in common: should. It’s a terrible word. One I use, and think, and feel, far too often. Maybe when it comes to these things, to most things even, the world should should be banned. (See? This is tough. I just used it again.)

Truth be told, I’m really confused. I love this blog so much and the thought of stepping away – even for a limited time – makes me a bit sad. I also see continuing to blog (in some capacity) as a priceless opportunity to document the early days with my new creature.

But you know what makes me more sad, infinitely more sad? The thought of making an existentially blurry time even blurrier. The thought of missing something, a time, an experience, that I will never get back. The thought of spending precious moments and hours here – writing and worrying – when I could be staring at itty-bitty eyelashes and tickling the new big sisters.

Truth be told, I don’t know. I do know that without writing, in some form and in some quantity, my days aren’t as happy or full as they could be. For better or worse (for better), writing is it, my passion, the thing I adore. Part of me thinks I can – and should (ugh. that word.) maintain my writing even during the wild and wonderful early days with our new baby.

This post is all over the place, but that is okay because guess what? I am all over the place. I am awash in genuine uncertainty and insecurity here. But even now, a fourth option pops into my head.

• Maybe I should take this one day at a time and see how I feel when the baby comes, trust that my readers will be here when and if I choose to write. Maybe I should surrender a bit and realize that this flexibility I have in my life is a profound gift to open and savor when the time is right.

I don’t know. I still don’t know. But goodness am I thinking (non-stop) about these things.

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What do you guys think? Does the word ‘should’ populate too many of your thoughts too? Any advice for your ever-confused Professor of Insecurities? What would you do if you were me?