To my son.

I always imagined that I would have a boy, from the moment I thought, most seriously, about whether I might be a mother. I saw him in my mind’s eye - with wild curls and dark eyes taking in the world with a curiosity, an open heart, and growing pains.

I would call him Miles or Mateo - a name reminiscent of rain and soft bark, of water rushing over small stones - and I would raise him by the sea, in a blue house with wooden floors and a cast iron fireplace in the living room.

He comes to me like a memory I once forgot. Him in a garden, blowing bubbles with a thousand little rainbows in them, his honey-brown skin touched by the sunlight. I feel him with me, a creature from the universe that has yet to be birthed.

I kept him a secret from myself for a long time, afraid of what his presence might do to my life. Afraid of how he might shift the foundations of the ground I once stood on; how he might bring summer rains and autumn days through the windows of my guarded heart, a heart frightened of opening so wide that its shadows collapsed into fairy dust.

Because I know that as a mother, I will have to change. I will have to grow in unimaginable ways; I will have to rise to the occasion of patience, gratitude, and compassion each morning, like a noon star coming up for air.

But I would like to. I would like to have all these changes bloom inside of me, as I grow a life from my womb, his hands reaching to pry open the depths of me that perhaps nothing else could.

I pray I raise you well. I pray that there is little in comparison to the honour of being your lighthouse, of being your beacon over the sea. I would love nothing more but to have you placed in your mother’s and father’s arms, and have you blossom like cherry petals, your roots wound around our fingers.

I pray you have a father who is devoted to you. I pray you have both your parents living in the same home, standing strong in a marriage that weathers the storms of the changing seasons. I pray that we can watch you grow and age and change, celebrating birthdays and milestones with each year that your baby fat fades, that your legs stretch, that your mind beams with imagination and new ideas and your perspective of the world.

I pray that you become your most colourful, wildish self. I pray that you become your healthiest, happiest self. I pray that your father and I can create space for everything you are, and love all that you do with this one, gorgeous life that you have.

And I pray that when it gets hard, we can all remain as one, strings of wool still tucked into a warm, wide quilt. I pray that when the sky darkens, and chaos and fear come galloping over the horizon, that who we are will still be a thing that God has woven together and that no other thing can tear apart.

I pray that we are good to you. I pray that we are good for you. I pray that your father and I can show you what love is, what it means, and what it should be. I pray we can become better for you every single day, brushing away the skin of who we once were for the man and woman, for the mother and father, for the union of cups of love that we were always meant to be.

You are divine, my angel. Until I meet you, birthing you into this world with pain and joy and fullness, may you be the glow you have always been in my life.

Love, mum