I was recently organizing some files on my hard drive and I found a Word document titled simply, “A Letter To You.” I was momentarily mystified. A letter to me? Then, opening it, I realized it was a letter I wrote back in May of 2020. We were two months into the pandemic at the time, and I’d finally been able to catch my breath and desperately wanted to capture some of the feelings of the moment. I wrote a letter to my “future children,” hit save, and promptly forgot all about the letter.
Reading it back now almost a year later, it’s surreal to think about all that has changed (and all that hasn’t -we’re very much still in lockdown). I’m glad I took the time back in May to write down my thoughts, and I decided that (although I do hope future children read it one day), I wanted to share it here, as well. Maybe someone can relate. So here it is! And here’s to believing that the best is always yet to come.
May 12, 2020
To my future child(ren):
In some ways I feel less ready and farther away from being a mother now than I felt five years ago. I was twenty-three then, and I hadn’t done a lot of things I would eventually do: get married. Finish school and face reality as an adult. Become a lawyer. Dream up goals and longings for the future—some completely unexpected. Live through a pandemic. Grow a different, truer faith than the one I was raised with.
I still haven’t fully done some of those things. I haven’t lived through a pandemic—I am living in one as I write this. But at twenty-three, I knew I wanted babies. Wanted you. And I still do. If you are reading this, then you’re a dream-come-true in more ways than you could ever know.
At twenty-eight, I don’t want to be a mother any less than I did five years ago. But the things I’ve seen and learned in those intervening years has made me feel more unsure of the future than I ever realized up until now. I have thought of you my whole life. So when life as I knew it changed forever on or about March 13, 2020, my thoughts immediately flew to you. When the news was pouring in so fast and frightening it left me shivering uncontrollably at the end of each day, I’ll never forget what Grace said to me as she wrapped her arms around me. “I don’t want it to be the end of the world. We never got to have kids.”
But we quickly realized that this probably wasn’t the end of the world. A virus ripping across the globe and killing millions of people would have been unthinkable to me six months ago—it would have truly sounded like the end of the world. Since then, we’ve all found out that life finds a way, and though everything looks different now, there’s joy all around.
As that joy gets stronger and more confident in spite of the horror stories and death tolls, I’ve been thinking about what I want to write to you. I’ve wanted to journal about what I’m going through during this time since day one. Will you learn in school about the COVID-19 pandemic and wonder what your parents felt? But journaling has been harder now than it has been at other stage of my life. At the beginning, I was too shaken up to hold a pen steady for long enough to explore my feelings through words.
I also think I subconsciously knew that journaling to you wouldn’t be as simple as “we stocked the freezer with food to last us weeks at a time” and “we were afraid.” What’s going on with this virus is a piece in a larger picture of my life and everything that’s swirling around in it right now. I want to tell you all about it—in person one day, I hope, and also through the journaling I’m going to start doing more regularly to remember what this feels like. But I wanted to start with this letter, because a chapter of life this wild really needs a prologue.
I’ll close by telling you something Grace and I have thought about for a long time. We’ve always wanted you, individually and as a couple. And even though we can’t know exactly what you’ll be like, we feel strongly that you’re going to be part of our lives. So we often picture ourselves sitting at a table. It’s a long, sturdy table, set in a garden. The table is covered with good food and drinks, set with flowers and candles and all kinds of beautiful things. I picture it like a Renoir painting. It’s early evening—or maybe late afternoon—and Grace and I are sitting at the table. We’re waiting for everyone else to arrive, and we might be enjoying a glass of wine or an Aperol Spritz in the meantime. It’s a casual, sprawling, family-style setting, not meticulously set with forks and napkins and name cards. We don’t know exactly how many places there will be, but we know we’re just relaxing and waiting for our family to sit down at the table with us. We’re not anxious about when everyone we’ll get here; we’re having fun just us for now.
But even though I try to hold those table settings loosely in my heart rather than with clenched fists, let me tell you straight up: I cannot wait for the day you arrive. Sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re real—or will be, one day—but at the same time, the love I already feel for you is one of the only things I’m certain of in this crazy world.
Until we meet, I love you.