A Letter to My Firstborn 6 Weeks Before the Due Date of Baby Number Two

Dear Aurora: 

I hail from Queerville. 

Well, that's not true. But I like to claim it.

I wasn't lucky enough to be born in Castro or Greenwich;

I actually hail from second generation middle class white Los Angeles suburbia.

Queerville saved me. Actually Queerville brought you into being,

which was a part of my saving, but more on that at another time. 

What I'm trying to say is that 

anything I've done right and anything about me that's wise 

came from an accumulated clear-as-a-bell smartness 

belonging to the queers, the gays and lesbians, the bold bi's,

those who cross and switch and twerk and flame, 

the tender and fierce transfolks, the awesome androgynes,

the polys and kink-inclined. All of them--

they taught me true love, Aurora. It's that simple.

And because they taught me true love, I am now struggling 

(in a way that's not foreign to being human)

with what I know versus what I feel. 

Queers also taught me that knowing and feeling aren't separate,

so in a sense, this struggle is quite faithful. So I must listen to it.

Listen, like radically, listen. 

They taught me that there is always enough love

and any perceived deficit 

is probably some kind of trauma-induced pain that needs working. 

They taught me that, yes, there are limits on/to love, but not deficits 

and learning the difference between limits and deficits 

is how you heal that trauma induced pain. 

So for years I've been learning and swimming in and sometimes resisting 

the spaces betweeen my perceived deficits and truthful limits. 

In all honesty, I think I'm doing pretty good these days, at the age of 32. 

Anything the queers taught me about love, you, Aurora, have solidified,

albeit unknowingly, with the grace of your presence in my life. 

Mothering is just a doubling down on any lesson of love you've learned 

prior to the occassion of becoming a parent. 

All this to say: I've learned and I've become better. Thank God. 

But right now, staring into the future, there is something calling out to me

to be rigorously honest about how perceived deficits/limits 

are fuzzing like some impossibly gorgeous horizon 

induced by a sunset that you just don't want to quit.  

You see: you and I have about 6 weeks left together. 

Your brother, Isaiah, is supposed to be born on October 24th

and while every ounce of me can't wait to behold him,

every ounce of me is also grieving the loss of me and you. 

Not that we are going anywhere, but a glacial shift is about to happen between us.

There is always always always loss in change. 

And you're too young to get what this change will entail for us.

I feel kinda guilty about that,

but more than anything I feel responsible 

for our collective grief--yours and mine--

in an anticipatory way. 

I am so fucking in love with you. 

What your little life does to me in indescribable. 

What I see in your eyes

What I hear in your babble

What I feel in holding your toddler body

What I sense in witnessing your becoming--

I am so fucking in love with you. 

Part of me is reluctant to share that love. 

There I said it. 

There's a part of me that still believes,

somewhere down deep, 

even though the queers taught me different,

and i "know" different,

that I only have so much room

and only have so many resources

and only have so much time

and only have so many ways

to love

and that when Isaiah arrives 

some of what's available in me will go to him

and you will be left wanting--

the thought of which makes me spiritually sick

and sorrowful in my guts.   

Is this some capitalist-imperialist ideology in me?

Or as the spiritualists would say: "deficit model thinking"? 

For a long time I thought it would be just me and you. 

Just me and you and you and me. 

Maybe it's because I (mostly) grew up with a single  mom

and learned to trust life in that dyad. Or maybe it's because 

I never thought I'd settle into a romantic relationship secure enough

to also contain parenting alongside romance and knew knew knew

I couldn't parent more than one by myself. But up until J.R. arrived

and then Isaiah came along, I thought it'd be momma and kid, only. 

I was prepared for that. I'm not prepared for this. 

I'm not prepared to share my heart with any other little being than you. 

I want to give you everything I have. 

I don't want to have to choose between you and anything else, ever. 

I don't want to be split. 

I want ultimate harmony with you, 

a circadian dance where your needs, the legit ones,

are met by the innate supply G-d has implanted in mommies

for the eternal supply of offspring. 

I'm not prepared for this. 

This morning you woke up late. 

I brought you into bed with me, 

so you could drink your bottle and I could give snuggles

all at the same time. 

Just lingering in that moment, 

feeling the fleeting seconds go by--

will we have this kind of time in 3 months from now?-- 

was enough to bring me to tears. 

And so I stayed. 5 minutes turned to 10.

10 minutes to 20. 20 to 45. 

I was late for work and couldn't care less. 

And then, then I had to write. 

Because even though you will only be this little for so long

and even though I will only have one child for so long

there is nothing that can take my written words away. 

 

When you are older

and I am gone

or I'm still here but you are curious about what it used to be like,

I want you to read this and know-- 

that in the last weeks before Isaiah was born

you were in my constant thoughts

and i was summoning every lesson from Queerville 

that I could possibly summon

because I need to believe, now more than ever, 

that love will make room, will expand, will multiply,

will unlock places in me that i never even knew existed. 

Because I've never ever ever loved anything the way I love you

and I want every single thing that I do, 

including giving birth to and raising another child,

to make my love of you more palpable, more felt, more real. 

The queers have never lied, never led me astray. 

If you understand, years from now, from the context of our relationship,

or in the Spirit of this writing, the difference between limits and deficits,

and most importantly about the power of love 

to create more of itself from itself,

please be sure to give credit where credit is due. 

That is all I ask. 

Love, 

Momma