dear baby....

... For all the ways that I love you, I understand, a little better, how God loves me.


I do not love you because of what you can do.

You can do much more now than when you were brand-new, when the heavy musk of the divine lingered on the top of your sweet head, in the crease of your neck, in the breath of you, when I could press your sweet palms and soles to my nose and breathe in the holy fragrance of Spirit-in-womb still glowing between your fingers and toes, and know that to hold you was to cradle the presence of the Divine. You have, literally, come a long way, baby. Still, compared to what I can do, you can't do much. It's really not about that anyway.

I don't love you for the ways you might make me feel, or for the ways in which you might reflect me back to myself.

Sure, I love when when I smile at you, and the joy bubbles up in you, which bubbles up in me, and we spill joy all over each other, and you take pleasure in my pleasure, and I, in yours; I love you when I am made somber by your pain, and you, by mine, even if you don't understand what these pains and pleasures are, outside of their presence in my face before yours. I love you when you're present with me, and I love you when you're not, when I search for your eye but you're distracted by something shiny across the room, or by your own senses of pain or pleasure or discomfort or anger or weariness or hunger.

I'll be honest, baby, and say that I still don't really understand the depths to which love responds to pain. But know that whether you know my presence in your pain, or you feel alone: I love you.

I love you when we simply share a space and natter back and forth, with lulls between as I measure flour, or as you gum a spatula and kick the entire eighteen-pack of eggs onto the dog, who is furtively chewing on your favorite pacifier (again). I love you because I know you; because I know what it means to know you, even though what it means to know is, in comparison, mostly beyond your understanding.

I love you when you are fiery and fighting, and I absolutely joy to imagine what fires you'll fight; I love you when you melt into me, idly knead my bottom lip in a handful, forming baby knowings of comfort.

I love you when you kick me. I will love you the same when you stop.

My love for you is unaffected by your desire toward forward or backward. Whether you ever learn to maneuver yourself toward that shiny object across the room, or not. However long it takes you. Whether you ever get there. You were made to reach for more, and I will help you do it. But if, for whatever reasons, you never get there: I love you.

I don't love you because you're doing the "right" things, either. Ideas of what right and wrong might mean are beyond your understanding. And even as you come to understand more about them: every time you fail, I love you.

Not I still love you. 

Not I love you anyway. 

Not drag yourself back to me and prove your worth before I let you sully my arms.

Every time you fail: I love you.

Because you are. I love you because you are here. Not that you are here, but you're here! My day is brighter when I see your face; my heart lifts whether I am in the presence of your laughter or your tears; I simply delight that I am with you. Because you are mine. You are always mine; you will always be mine, from the foundations of the world, in life or death, you belong to me; the divine between your fingers is held sacred in the palm of my hand.

My love for you is not a feeling: it is a union, held in laughing tension or solemn trust. It reflected in tandem, one in each other, but it does not change, based on what you reflect. And it cannot be contained or expressed fully in this note, with these words, in this language.

I just thought you should know.