Dear Reese,
Two years ago today, I was in a hotel room in Kansas. My heart had just been broken. A baby boy whom I thought was going to be mine had just been born a few miles away. I spent six months knowing about him, imagining him growing, calling him by the name I picked out. I had spent the last few days in this hotel room, recovering from COVID, and waiting for a call to be there for the birth.
The call I got instead would be one of the worst moments of my life.
Your MorMor and I drove home alone the next day, an empty car seat installed in the back.
For the last year, you’ve been in that same car seat. You might be getting too big for it soon.
Today, we have a great day. The library. Fika for lunch (the Ole Rolls are incredible). A Luba Libations launch party tasting. You spin the wheel and win us a free 4-pack. The woman says you’re a good luck charm. (You are.)
We go visit Plum Loco Animal Farm afterwards, and it’s an incredible space — besides the petting zoo (which has wide open grassy areas and plenty of room to run around when you’re older), there’s a fantastic play area. They’ve set up a little town with kid-sized buildings — a vet, a diner, a general store, a barn. You crawl into the vet playhouse with some older kids and then spend a while independently playing in the general store with the fake food.
(Okay, confession — I am not a horse person, darling. It’s a whole story. And I actually really hope you don’t become one. But in the future we can get the carrots to feed to them.)
For your afternoon nap, MorMor and I walk you in the wagon up and down Mariner Road. In the evening, we walk around our land next door, imagining the view from your future bedroom window.
It’s a long, good day. Even though I have a headache on and off for most of it, and I know teething pain comes and goes for you. We still have so much fun together.
I wish I could go back to myself two years ago and show her today. So much can change in two years.
Loving you has healed me. At the same time, if I’m honest, the loss of that baby boy who was never mine is still there too. It will always be. A long time ago, when I was going through my divorce and in the worst of my pain, my therapist told me that someday it would ‘just be something that had happened’. Meaning, it wouldn’t feel like it was still happening.
It was so hard to believe her, but eventually it was. And now, that loss two years ago — while terrible and life-altering — is also just something that happened.
I hope he is having a good birthday.
And I am so grateful that you and I were meant to find each other.
Love,
Mama