What If…

Lately, I have been thinking about what life would be like it I never had you.  I look at you, and it’s like you have always been with me.  It’s almost as if these last 6 months have been the last 36 years of my life, and I’ve known you forever.  I’m sure my life would be exactly the same as it was prior to you.  I would be working a job that I enjoyed, traveling to cities that were just ok, fighting with inept airlines, and coming home to your father where we would watch TV and go eat Mexican food.  And that would be enough, because it was all I knew.  And it was how my life went.

Recently, I’ve been hit very hard with the reality that you never know what life may throw at you.  This is something I already knew, but it really sunk into my head over the last few days. Someone we know lost their little 4-year-old girl in a tragic drowning accident last week, and I am having a hard time letting this go.  I’m having a hard time looking at you, and knowing how lucky I am to hold you, and how they will never hold their daughter again.  You never expect to lose a child.  You expect that you will grow old, and pass away before your children, all while enjoying their lives for many years.  You think about first days of school, graduations, boyfriends, a wedding, maybe a grandchild.  You don’t think of anything other than a beautiful future. So now, I look at you, and I thank God every day that you were a gift we were unexpectedly thrown.  So, if I have held you too much, kissed you too much, or smothered you with dramatic gestures of adoration over the last few days, I do not apologize.  Because it occurred to me that I may not have you always.  And what would life really be like then?

Life is full of “what ifs”.  What if you were a boy?  What if you had been twins?  (they run strong in our family)  What if you had some sort of illness from birth?  What if I never really bonded with you?  What if we never went off birth control, and you never appeared in the first place?  What if you grow to be a teenager that hates us?  What if you grow to be the ideal daughter?  What if we move away from the home you grow up in?  What if…what it…what if…Each of these answered questions would change the way we are living.  Each of these small details, or twists of fate, would turn us into a different direction.  And that seems so bizarre, because I feel the path we are on now is so very perfect.  I don’t want to walk another path.  In fact, I want to stand still and enjoy right where we are because time is ticking too loudly, and the walk we are on is starting to feel like a fast paced jog.

I love you, little person.  I love your entire being more than life itself.  As we sat on the porch today, & watched the rain fall, a tear dropped from my eye onto your beautiful curly hair.  Because I knew that the world was washing away some of the sadness I have been feeling.  But, all you saw was this magical moment where the world turned wet.  You giggled when the rain drop hit your hands, and you jumped when the thunder crashed.  I thought to myself, “what if the sun was still shining?”  We would never have shared the moment in the rain when mommy let the sadness go, we talked about how thunder wasn’t scary, and you felt the rain touch your perfect skin.