Letters to my Daughter: May 22, 2016

Here we are. You’ve been with me since mid-February, an unexpected Valentines Day gift. I wish I could tell you I'm happy, I am in my own way, but it's the kind of happiness based on thin promises. My active duty contract is coming to a close and I've managed to save enough to get us by for one year. Your father and I started seeing each other before we knew about you. He had a soft voice and played piano. He used to bring me extra food from the ship galley with a smile and folded his laundry next to me as we watched a movie on his laptop. He was someone I looked forward to seeing after a long day.

I don’t know what I’m going to do after the doctors hand you to me. I want to close my eyes and dissolve into the ground. Everyone tells me I’m going to be a great mother. I have a record collection, I’m well-read, and our home will be clean and quirky. I’m a woman in her early 30's with modest ambitions barely actualized and you deserve nothing short of exceptional. 

The ultrasound equipment thumped rhythmically next to me as I watched your small transparent legs pump beneath you on an outdated black and white screen. The nurse gave me cold moist wipes to clean the lubricant off my stomach and blurry screen captures ground out on cheap paper like a series of receipts from the grocery store. I wanted to replay that moment over and over. Will you have greenish brown eyes like me? Will you have light caramel colored hair the way I did when I was small? Will you be an aggressive baby or a gentle little soul? There is so much to look forward to my heart could burst the way your little heart pounds inside of me. Both of us struggling to make sense of something that's hard to describe even at my age.