The Earthquake

Everything I heard from friends, relatives, and society before you were born is still true… You will disrupt my life. I’m not mature enough to parent. I’m not ready. I don’t know how agonizingly difficult this is going to be. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t have enough money. A child deserves two parents with good jobs, health insurance, and a plan. If I screw parenting up & go party, all contact will be cut off. An unplanned child could have a miserable existence!!! I will be a working single mom and you will be in daycare alllll the time. Daycare might damage you!!!

One person said to me, “There is a plan.” Everybody else said, “I’m fearful, and you should be too.”

Baby we’ve made it through some of the hardest days, and some of the hardest days are yet to come. My little book of parenting advice that people wrote in at my baby shower no longer applies. “Don’t sweat the potty-training” (I did) and “sleep when the baby sleeps” (I didn’t!) and “Treasure every moment” (I tried!).

You’re four now, and you have disrupted my life in every possible way. You are nothing less than an earthquake. You make me wiser and stronger and better. I have poured out myself into you. You were always my destiny.

I’m still not enough. And that is where my strength comes from. 

It comes from some of the ones who were formerly fearful. It comes from some of the ones who are stepping into their destiny too.

(And daycare. Daycare is the reason you wrote your best friend’s name yesterday without looking at anything, just right out of your head. At age four). 

I love you.