Letters to my Daughter: September 19, 2016

I don’t feel time anymore and my self deprecation gets me through the day. No one wants to know about my bouts of insomnia or how surreal it is to feel the rhythm of your hiccups inside me because I’m alone. I’ve spent months collecting trinkets and clothes for you like a rotund magpie.

Charlotte, I imagine you’ll be soft and small with golden brown hair and limp little arms. Your eyes will be blue like a puppy’s that fade into something else over time. You’ll shriek your way into this world and I won’t know what to do with you. Months of unsolicited advice will feel even more useless when they hand you back to me. I shouldn’t eat chocolate because it will give you colic, I’ll have to give up coffee and beautifully soft cheese. Our last names won’t match and no one will understand. I have to recover as fast as possible so no one will know I was ever pregnant. Neither of us will be free of the unsolicited opinions of strangers, the paradox of being a woman we’ll both share. 

My navel is a soft pink bottle opener smiling back at me at the center of an oblong bulge that used to be my abdomen. Older women tell me it will shift back into place. My incredulity amuses them. The backs of my thighs are lined like faint pink marble and I’ve been reassured it will fade. I’m carrying you well, I glow, people reach out to touch you and leave lingering warm patches on my midsection. You’re so admired, a doughy little thing cradled within me — I imagine how it will be when we’re no longer a novelty. When your face is violet and shrieking, what will they think of us then? I’ll be the single mother of an inconsolable baby and you’ll be my fat little monster no one wants to praise. People are horrible. I will always love you through all of your seasons in life. You will always be my little person.