Last Night

October 23, 2025 — 8:40pm

Dear Reese,

Tonight is our last night sleeping in our condo. I’ve spent the last five years here. You’ve lived here your whole life. There’s lots of busyness (and exhaustion) with moving, so the emotion of the moment hasn’t really surfaced for me. But when we’re in your bath this evening, I realize it’s your last bath in this place. I’ve given you hundreds of baths here. I tell you to pause and recognize the moment. You used to hate baths, now you’re a happy little fish.

While I sing your lullabies tonight in the dark, I think about all the hours I've spent singing you to sleep in this bedroom. I used to hold you for a half hour or more while singing camp songs until you’d stop crying and fall asleep.

It’s been a good home for us. It was a good home for me to get me home. After all those years in Austin and Boston and away from my family, I got this condo to be in the place I wanted to be. By MorMor and Cappi. By the lake. And I knew, baby girl, even then, that I wanted you someday.

This is the place where we did home studies to qualify me for the adoption process, and where I grieved from two disrupted adoptions before your existence healed me. This is the place where I turned a guest room into a nursery that was meant for you. You sleep under the waves I painted on the wall and the constellations Cappi arranged on the ceiling.

You may not remember this home. Or maybe someday you’ll tell me about the earliest memory you recall was while I read Winnie-the-Pooh to you during bathtime here. Either way, this place shaped your first year. I’m very grateful.

Love,

Mama