What I Tell Him

I talk to him. Maybe this isn’t something that I should admit to more than a few people (if that), but at night when we’re alone I talk to him. Sometimes during the day I forget that I’m pregnant until he reminds me with that familiar little tickling feeling inside, but at night in the dark before I fall asleep I know he is there. I lay in my bed with my hand on my abdomen and think about the little guy growing inside of me and the way my life is about to change. And I can’t help but talk to him. I tell him how much I love him already… sometimes even tearing up anticipating how much I am going to love him when I hold him in my arms. I tell him about all the things I hope I am able to teach him… about being kind and loving and giving and honest. I tell him about all the places I want to take him and all the discoveries I hope we’ll make together. I tell him that I’m not perfect, but that I will do the best I can to give him everything he needs.

This weekend I went out to get the mail, and a bulky manilla envelope addressed to me “and Baby Matousek” leaned against the side of the front porch. I brought it in and tore at it with my fingernails before getting out the scissors. Brooklynn watched in anticipation. The return address was from my dear friend Lisa who I met when she joined my writing group. She has been so incredibly supportive of my journey to motherhood. Last year she sent me a homemade card with a drawing of a sperm on the cover. “I know you’ll pick a good one!” she said. A few months later she sent me a delicious smelling fertility candle from Hawaii. And this past weekend she sent me a little brown box that contained something that said so much to me with just its contents. The two tiny blue Keen sandals told me that she loved me and supported me and was excited about my little boy. And they said “I know who you are and what’s important to you, and I know you will take that little boy on adventures that you will both love.”

Last night just before I drifted off to sleep, I thought of the little feet that will some day fit in those sandals and how they will likely clop along clumsily beside me as I hold his hand. “I can’t wait for all the adventures we’re going to share,” I told him, and I went to sleep excited about whatever comes next.