My boy.
My bean.
I want you to know something that, up until recently, has been really hard for me to say:
I was afraid of you. When you were in my belly, I wasn’t sure how I could have enough love for both you and your sister. People told me I would, but really, a part of me didn’t believe them. Almost everything about my pregnancy with you was marked with anxiety, like I was holding my breath and afraid to exhale. I loved you before I knew who you were, and yet, even though we wanted you and planned for you, I found myself becoming increasingly scared of how you would change me, how you would change the three of us as a family. At times, I wasn’t even sure I could picture myself having a boy.
But then there you were. 8:06 a.m. on February 9th, 2011. You came out pink and mad and screaming with perfect apgars and a feisty appetite. And for the first time in months, I felt myself exhale just a little bit.
But it was the first time you smiled at me- I think that’s when I finally exhaled the rest of the way, when I knew it was okay to let go of the fear that I had been carrying around. I remember thinking that it was pure sunshine, like your face just couldn’t get big enough to contain your grin. Your eyes crinkled up and turned into little slits the same way mine do, the same as your P-Pop. I don’t remember the very first time I sang “You Are My Sunshine” to you, but I know it was soon after that. And then it was every night before bed, every time I nursed you, every time you were upset. Or just because. It became our song, our thing.
“One more dun-jine, mama,” you’d tell me, when you were big enough to climb up into your crib, but still small enough to want to stay in my lap and let me rock you. Sometimes, randomly, you would crawl up onto my lap while I was sitting on the couch or working at the computer and simply say “dun-jine.” And whatever it was that I thought was so important at the moment was put aside because sunshine always takes precedence. We know this. Even now, when I lay you down in your new big boy bed, you still reach up to touch my face and in your sleepy whisper, say, “Sing sunshine, mama.”
One day, I know you’ll stop asking me to sing it to you. I don’t know when, but that’s one of those things about parenthood- you never really know when that last time will be, you just always carry around this sense that what you have is fleeting. But even after that time comes- after you’re too much of a big boy to let me sing to you, or play Spiderman, or give you a hug and kiss before I drop you off at school- you will always be that to me. I’ll always see it when I look at you, Miyo. You are the sunshine that came after my gray, the reassurance that came after my doubt. You were my beautiful exhale, brought to me in a tiny and perfect 7 lbs 7 oz.
Next week, you- my baby boy- will become a big brother. I imagine that when I put you to bed on the night before your sister is born, I’ll sit and hold you on your bed like usual. We’ll both try to maneuver around my bulging belly like we have for the last several weeks, and I’ll once again be amazed that you’re able find a comfortable spot in my arms. And I’ll sing Sunshine for you, but also for me. For your sisters, for Daddy. For all the changes I was scared of, that in your own sweet way, you taught me me were okay to embrace. The words will hit me differently that night and in the days to come than they ever have before, but even so, one thing I know beyond any doubt: I’m a better person because I’m your mommy.
I love you, Miyo.
The Bug, the Bean {&the Bump} 