Dear Me

Dear (20 years from now) me,

I have begun to think about what you will be like. What is different for me now is that in every stage of my life so far, I have been anxiously awaiting the next. When I was young I wanted to be grown and when I was grown I want to be married with babies and now that I am married with babies I am not ready for my kids to grow up and so I want the clock to stop. I want time to stand still. I want my babies to stay…. Babies.

I can’t help but wonder if you will be the woman in the grocery store that follows behind the young mother totally overwhelmed by the crying baby on her chest and wining toddler in the front of the cart with his legs dangling down. If you will stare at her, willing her to understand that these days of feeling overwhelmed and so tired her eyes might bleed are so limited. That cleaning the house and tripping over toys in the hall will be a distant memory and if she so much as blinks to fast, it will all be… gone.

I wonder if you will be the woman who lies in bed on her side and wills herself to remember what it was like to have her 3 year old lying next to her curled up like the letter C breathing steadily, sleeping so peacefully. I wonder If you will  try to recall what it was like to hold your infants pudgie hand and feel his dimpled fingers wrapped around your index finger as he walks using you to keep his balance. I can’t help but wonder if you will be the woman that sits in her old rocking chair and tries to remember what it fell like to have your sleeping infant’s weight on you. To bring back the feeling of him curled into you like the missing piece of a puzzle. Try to so vividly to recall how the top of your baby’s head smelt after his bathe time.  I wonder if you will be the woman who sits in a park with a book and closes her eyes listening to the innocent sound of children playing and laughing and wish your way back to the days that felt like they would never end. The days you were up making lunches until midnight and changing your toddlers bed sheets for 4^th consecutive night because he had an accident. I wonder if you will be the type of woman who doesn’t know what to do with her days and weeks now that your babies are grown and they no longer belong to you. I am curious if you will find your hands molding clay or stitching fabric at a sewing machine. I wonder what you will do with your time. I wonder if you will feel even remotely as fulfilled and happy. If your life will carry the same meaning when you no longer have these perfect little humans waiting on your every move.

I hope 20 years give you happiness and fulfillment wherever your road may lead.

See you to soon…..

-Adrienne