heartbeat

2/16/2012
I heard your heart beat today.
Before then, and maybe for five minutes after -- as long as it took me to get out of the office and into the parking garage -- I had been denying it.  Denying you.
I cannot see you.
I cannot feel you.
I feel what your presence is doing to me, but how could I be so sure?
I was worried about you.  From the minute I called you mine.
But I was not ready to love you yet.
I loved you enough that I changed the way I lived.
The way I ate.
The way I moved.
The way I worked.
Because I knew I needed to do everything in my power to protect you.
And if you were to be mine, to hold, to love, to raise, to cuddle, to teach... you'd survive.
Resilient.
Like me.
And so today, we went looking for your heartbeat.  Buried deep inside me, under all the mess and all the dysfunction.
I laid there, sure that we wouldn't find you.  Convinced myself that I'd, once again, loved only to have lost.
I could not hear you for the sounds of myself.
And then I saw the light.  The light in her eyes flashed and she smiled at me, "I heard it. There it is.  The heartbeat.  It's perfect."
Your heartbeat.
The proof that you are still here.
That you are mine and you are growing and you are alive.
I choked back tears, because I do not cry in public.
I swallowed all the fears and worries, which had been leading up to that moment.
And I left.
Today was the day I was waiting for.
The day I knew everything would change.
Because now I have a name for you.
And now I am so very aware of how my body is wrapped around yours and what I must do to help you survive.  To help you grow so when you get here, the world will be no match for you.
My gift.
Not my mistake.
Not my regret.
Not my accident.
My gift.
You will be mine.  And I yours.  A family.
With a foundation of a heart beat, so buried, so rapid.
I loved you before.
I was just afraid to say it.