Have I Told You Lately?

     My girls write gift lists religiously. They come rushing up the stairs after a commercial, eyes alight with tiny imaginings, a new and wonderful toy or game filling their heart with desire. "Mom, for my birthday, can I have...?" they say to me with a smile wide, gleaming white baby teeth sparkling and winking at me.
     It is easy to placate them in these moments, to tell them, "Sure, write it on your wish list." Christmas is the same, though longer and larger. As the holiday looms in the distance, any jaunts we take to the store are replete with requests as sweet as they are naive. We lie, white lies, about a mysterious man with a gift-giving plan who will make their dreams come true.

     I sit thinking about these lists and lies regularly, though they don't trouble me deeply for the girls because I know the trinkets are superficial and easily forgotten. It's more for myself that I worried. I couldn't ask for any birthday gifts last year, not with the one thing I wanted most so out of reach, a dead son back to life in my arms. And for Christmas, I couldn't fathom asking for something I never wanted, a new baby on the way to take his place.

     So now I'm sitting here, a gift in my lap that I never asked for, never wanted, but one that in all reality is that one thing that was so far out of reach. I've had this gift for weeks, almost two months actually, and I still don't know what to think of him. I imagined, just like my girls do, all the emotions and future that comes with a new gift. I could see the struggles I would endure and the happiness that would fill my family. I hoped they'd balance. I could see the despair that could come if this gift came the way it did last year, empty and without the color of real life, shrouded in stillness and death.

      I haven't wanted to admit that it has taken me so long, so much contemplation, to look on my new son and to want him. Sure, it is strange. I haven't wanted to tell you that as easy as it is to love, it has been difficult to say it to him, out loud. I have held and fed him, sung to him and calmed him with words. I have slept with him in my arms, let him hear the rhythmic beat of the heart he knows so well, from the inside out. But it has taken me a long time, too long it feels like to me, to open that heart to him, to say, "I love you."

     I was told so many times when I was pregnant that it was a blessing. There was this mysterious man with a gift-giving plan who could make my dreams come true. Very few people understood then that I wasn't ready and hadn't wish-listed this gift. I was told that when he arrived, I would be ready to be a mom again, that I would welcome him with open arms and the love would come.
     I guess it has, better late than never, though it isn't as free-flowing and natural as I would like. None of this experience has been what I would like. We're all in it together despite the vast amounts of work and patience that it has taken to make it this far, this first six weeks. My girls are planning their birthday parties again, adding guests and games to be played to the lists of gifts they want. My own birthday is coming up soon this year and again, I can't think of anything I want to request. Maybe I'm going to be still figuring out my latest unexpected gift by then, maybe I'll finally be adding him as an afterthought to all my wish-lists.