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.