Love Letters to My Children: Looking For You

The first time I was looking for you, I didn’t know what I was looking at let alone what I was looking for. There was a lot of black, white, grey, and movement. And then – POOF – there was this tiny spot with a moving spot inside of it and there you were. And I have been looking for you ever since.

There were other ultrasounds after that first one and the time between each stretched on and on until I was desperate for a chance to look for you; to see for myself that you were still growing and to hear the beautiful sound of your heartbeat. By the time I got situated and you came on the screen, my eyes scanned the screen, hungry for that first glimpse.

And then I met you. So very many people were in that room while you and I worked to get you Earthside but when I heard you, they may as well have been 400 miles away because all I could do was look for you. Five seconds lasted decades. And then there you were. Out of thin air – there was the human I’d spend my entire life looking for.

That night – and every night for the last 2,063 days – I have looked for you in your bed. I have looked for you wrapped tightly in swaddles, amid tangled bed sheets, and buried under mounds of blankets and stuffed animals. I have spent seconds stealing glances lest I wake you and I have accidentally lost hours in adoration at your sleepy altar in my own religion of motherhood.

Now that you’re in school plays and programs, there is nothing quite so thrilling as looking for you amid your classmates and then – finally – seeing the face of the boy that I am so proud of I could burst. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t speak a single word that you were supposed to in the Thanksgiving Reader’s Theater. I’d found you. And that was enough.

The reason I’m thinking about this is because I almost got in a wreck in carpool line last week. You were walking up the sidewalk on your way into the classroom building, and although I’d taken full measure of you that morning at least twice and had gotten my “Have a Good Day Kisses” – I couldn’t stop looking for you. My heart got too big for my chest as I saw you stride into the playground area carrying your bag, prepared to face the day without me…and I just had to see you until you were too far for me to make out.

When I was watching you walk away from me and into the day that is truly the beginning of your life away from me – a life that you know more about than I do and in which I cannot make decisions for you – it struck me that this is just the start of this new era of looking for you.

One day I will look for your precious head of hair on a baseball field and then on a graduation stage. One day I will watch you drive away from our home for the first time and I will look for you desperately to come down our street when curfew comes around. I will look for you as long as I can when you drive away again on your way back to college and I will look at my phone in the most obsessive of ways when it rings hoping that the person on the other line is you.

One day I will look for you as I’m ushered down the aisle at your wedding and I will look for you in your own children.

And one day, when I stand among the angels and the saints and in the full glory of God, my face will be turned downward because I will always be looking for you. I will always be looking for you.

So please know, my sweet, precious child: your mama will always be looking for you. There will never be a higher thrill than when my eyes make purchase and there will be no casual, sad satisfaction like the one when you’re too far for me to actually see.

I will always look for you, my child, as you are the sweetest sight I’ve ever seen.