Recognizing that luck is a pervasive force in life is impossible given its often subtle and mundane presence. It is a word more often assigned to a lottery winner or a survivor of a lightning strike. Rarely is it noted in the fortune of picking a novel from the shelves of a used book store that will rapidly become a dear friend; sometimes, even, a life altering one. It is often glossed over in the long discussion between dear friends in front of a fireplace on a winter's evening. It is the grace of dew in the morning or frost on the windows or the fortuitousness of waking up naked beside another sharing a piece of your soul. It is in the heartfelt laughter of a child or the mercy of death that comes during sleep.

There are so many ways to be lucky and so many ways to ascribe our personal success to our own inherent worthiness. So much of our success and the course of our lives is the result of being in the right place at the right time. In being born in a specific geographic location. In the difference between a thriving or a failing public school being the closest in proximity to home.

I fell in love hiking in the Andes and again in the cramped twin bed of a dorm room and yet again laying beneath a grand piano while Clair de Lune echoed through an empty concert hall near midnight. I believe I once fell in love in a single evening drinking microbrews and listening to The Killers moan their way through "Everything Will Be Alright" in a dank, dirty bar in Portland. I have loved at least a dozen novels with a commitment and passion most reserve for intimate relationships. I have listened to the work of certain composers on repeat so many times that my iTunes top ten features songs played thousands of times and likely puts me in the company of individuals labeled with some version of violent psychosis.

I come from a good family where loving is an assumption; I have walked through every day of my life with a complete understanding that in the world there are four other souls who mostly understand mine and would hop on a plane if requested. I have loved animals more deeply than many humans and dear (dearest) friends with a terrifying, unconditional ferocity. I found a kind and gentle man who loves me with the persistence of the sun rising and find shelter in our unlikely pairing.

I have felt in my very marrow the quiet of the woods at twilight and gazed upon a moose and calf in the light of dawn. I have placed my hand on the trunk of an old, gnarled tree and felt humbled by my brief, insignificant existence. I have observed elephants suckling their young and water buffalo warding off a pack of lions and slept beneath the stars on the sand-bottom of a dry river thousands of miles from home.

I have fallen in love with this world and the infinitely diverse creatures who reside here a thousand times over and yet I find myself humbled, yet again, in finding that my knowing is so naive.

My love for you is rooted in spit up and sleeplessness and desperation and anxiety and deep-seated prayers about the world you will inherit. Its foundation is a body destroyed by your delivery and several months of wondering why and what and how I did this to my life. It is raw and vulnerable and unceasing.

I find myself overwhelmed by its fullness at the most unlikely times. Tears come to my eyes in the early mornings, when it is just you and I and you have spent at least ten minutes organizing your bananas, blueberries, and cheerios into exact piles. When I look at you and tell you I love you and you grab both my cheeks in your hands, the tears are unexpectedly there. And when you laugh from the very marrow of your bones because a word like axe or crinkly or toot seems just ridiculous, my heart nears bursting. It is your love of books and music and the way you dance to the beat that destroy me. It is your gentleness of spirit and the kindness that is so inherent in everything you do. It is that I feel so wholly and utterly undeserving of such unhindered joy.

It is the quiet moments with you that are unexpected. It is not the fact that I love you that is surprising but the sheer violence of it. A love that exceeds all the other loves I have ever known. It is the kind of love that fills and fills and fills until it necessarily must spill over and infect every aspect of my reality.

The night is still.

And I am blissfully alone.

The mountains are aged giants and the moon reflects perfectly a thousand times on the surface of the Colorado.

And I forget, for one minute, that the world is complicated. That, somehow, we are complicated.

There is freedom in amnesia.

Liberation in the company of giants.

Time is so malleable and so flexible. The first four months of A's life felt like years. Decades, perhaps. Trapped in the whirlwind of sleeplessness and screaming felt like a mini hell. I did not relish that time and I do not miss it. Our pediatrician asks us at every appointment if we are "having fun yet." The first time I truly responded yes was at her last check up. Nine months in I was starting to really smile again. Nine months.

There are these times that move so slowly and times that seem to move so quickly we are unable to fathom or process that we are hurtling forward at alarming speed.

Much of adulthood seems to fall under the alarming speed category and I wonder if this is because we put so many of the things that slow time down on pause. I ceased writing for a very long time. It's been years since I lay in bed until I was bored, dreaming up unknown lands and monsters and friends who exist only to me.

When I was a little girl, I would lay in bed as long as I possibly could, thinking that my brothers and dad would remark on just how long I slept when I finally came down. I failed every time. When I came down to join in the cartoon fest, the most I got was a suggestion to pour myself a bowl of cereal.

I remember the length of a summer day through my child eyes. From morning to night an entire kingdom could rise and fall. Alliances between brother and sister could shift and the friend you woke up to was the enemy by nightfall. Night games and toes pressed between green grass and mud felt blessedly long. Dusk falling neither too quick or too slow but precisely appropriate for the last game of hide and seek to feel peacefully, perfectly timed.

The recollections of childhood are more a long series of sensations. The long-awaited cool air of the evening pushing out the oppression of ninety degree days. Moths fluttering against walls in a dark room. The wretched thrill of jumping into a pool as the sun contemplates an entrance. Stars and tents and ancient cottonwoods and crawdads running through small hands. Bikes and the burn of being out of breath and soft sheets. The fear of under the bed and cracked closets and the abstract contemplation of death. Fresh-baked cookies and bedtime stories and the comfort of my brothers breath nearby as I drift to sleep.

Childhood is a fleeting embrace. Both ethereal and ephemeral. A memory of a trip once taken, both familiar and utterly, unattainably foreign.

While running this morning, I thought about what I would wear on Saturday (a day full of social plans...this is a big deal with such a wee child at home!). Crisp, early morning air, my legs straining beneath me, and the thought that came to mind was clothing. I could blame the domesticity of caring for a child or too much down time but there is no excuse, really. I fear a descent into middle age in which I find myself more concerned about my clothing or my hair or my wrinkles than I do ideas. 

Apathy and frivolity are the real dangers of aging. Distraction by thoughts that have no right to occupy mental real estate. When I was younger, I obsessed over the poor and hungry, the diminishing habitats for animals, and how I could make things better. I raged against injustice and cried empathetic (and helpless) tears as I went to bed at night. As I've aged, I find a fair amount of my mental energy turning to things that HGTV implies are important. The color of our replacement carpet. What I will wear this weekend. Whether my retirement fund is large enough.

Thoughts that distract from living in this present moment. Ideas that take me away from the joy of existing here and now. Of relishing every ray of summer sunshine before the inevitable winter. Of watching my child develop incrementally into her own person. Of relishing the final years of Arvo's life (he is getting slower, his hips hurt after long walks, but I cannot think about this too long or too hard or I fast forward to a place where my longest confidante is no longer here and THAT certainly still has the power to double me over).

The things that do matter are kindness. A conscious turning away from anger and pride. Embracing others precisely where they are. And striving against the instinct to quit, to think about paint colors instead of the truly urgent concerns of our time. Apathy is a choice. The difficult thing, of course, is realizing--in the midst of a sometimes violent and overwhelming and cruel world--that we have unconsciously and unwillingly made the choice.

Forgiveness has come to mind a lot lately. And you have, too.

Before things went so badly, I was mildly obsessed with you.  You were an enigma. Mysterious. Slightly angry but SO vulnerable (a particularly potent combination). I loved those things about you.

But things went so wretchedly poorly. And at the time, the only thing I wanted was for you to suffer. Which is about the least flattering thing I could say. But it's honest. You hurt my feelings and my reaction was especially playground. You hurt me, so I wanted to hurt you.

I heard, though, from a friend that you think I hate you.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Honestly.

I worry about you. I hope that you're okay. And while my child-self wants you to hurt, my adult self just wants you to be okay. To find your people. To find a home. And to be happy.

So let's retire the child, shall we? Let's all move forward and acknowledge that what happened before was a lousy mess. Nothing more to it than that.

I loved you once. As a human, I love you still. I hope you find beauty and grace. I hope you find a home.

I miss you. But not enough to journey down that path again. Farewell, friend. And safe travels to you, sir.

There are infinite stories to  be told. And so many ways to tell them. We write our stories with each minute of each day, blissfully unaware that we are in the middle of a great telling.

Your story has just begun. So far it is toys and laughs and papa and love and I hope that's what it will be for a long, long time.

I am tortured by the idea that your life will contain anything but beauty.  I know the day will come when you look in the mirror and you will hate what you see.  I know others have the ability to make you feel less perfectly yourself.  I know you will meet people who are cruel simply to hurt.

I wish I could keep you from those things.  I wish I could give you only the perfect calm of spring mornings, the peace of your lover's arms, the absolute bliss of your favorite song played too loudly.  I wish your eyes would only behold the infinite ocean, the great, large mammals, and the laziness of snowflakes cascading from an endless sky.

I am tortured that I cannot keep you as you are and bewildered that this is how we all begin.

If we all start so, what happens in between? And what is the difference between those of us who cope, who find a brave face, and those who cannot do so?  How much intervention and love is necessary in the years between what you are and what you will become to keep the most integral part of oneself intact?

If we all begin in such grace, what power life has to shape and mold us.  But I do believe that we have the power to push back.  To hold onto innocence. To laugh deeply and wholeheartedly. To love others as though it is our ninth month on this planet.

It is the wish of every loving parent that time would hold still.  I feel the world knocking at our door, biding its time at the periphery. For now, I rock you and love you so much that the emotion is visceral and palpable and blinding. As I feel my life slip quietly into May, I chant again and again and hope again and again that you shall walk a path of vivacity and grace and courage.

With the time that we have together, I promise to love you and laugh with you. To hold you. To comfort you even when you pretend you are too old (we are never too old). With the time that we have together I will share all that I love about music and books and living a life on the edge of madness. I will teach you that you are beautiful, your body strong and capable, and your dreams important and worth striving for.

And when my December comes, I will try to make my exit gracefully. To give you one last gift in my fervent belief that death is nothing to be feared. Even if I must wear a mask, I will leave you believing that I was utterly at peace, terribly accepting.  But I will mourn, quietly, all the moments of your life I will not see and all of the times that you needed my physical presence.

Early on, when I was really struggling with the changes you brought to my life, a friend told me that to become a mother necessitates a true death.  It is not a transition, not some minute change that can be achieved without struggle, but an absolute, heart-wrenching demise of the former.  In the midst of this transition, I raged.  I clawed toward my old self and my old life and mourned, mourned, mourned my independence and freedom and selfishness.

What I failed to understand, though (despite a lifetime of this being the case), is the infinite beauty of the transformation.  There is so much complexity and so much love.  So much vulnerability and growth. A tremendous part of my old life was eviscerated the day you entered our lives. But that has been filled with unexpected blessings and joy and humbling ignorance of what to do with a human so small.

You have altered my entire existence. And my days, my minutes, are all the better for the blessing of coming to know you.

I love you. And though it is maddening to write (and, I remember, maddening to hear), you will not understand the extent of which until you are here, in this precise place.  And when you are (if it is the choice you make, the path you walk), I hope the knowledge will fill you. I hope knowing the depth of this maddening love gives you the strength to be precisely who you are. To live courageously and without fear.

You and I were both born the day you came into being.