To My Daughter and Her Dreams

All of the feels for my tiny human who is soon to make her grand debut.

I am less than one week away from giving birth to my daughter, and all I can think about are her dreams.

She has been in many of mine lately, floating around on a puffy cloud, moving so wistfully that I cannot catch a glimpse of her face, even in Dreamland.

I have no idea what she will look like — it is impossible for my brain to grasp that this tiny dancer in my womb is not just an alien poking me from the inside, making my stomach do somersaults, but is a human person with a face and toes that I have been trying to grab from the outside, laughing wildly when she yanks them into the depths of my belly to escape the embarrassing grasps of the Mommy Monster!

I am shocked at how fast three trimesters have flown by. I still have 16 posts about pregnancy to share! From the depths of my newborn Witching Hours that I’m bound to have amidst conflicting internal monologues of she is the cutest thing I have ever seen mixed with how the heck do I keep this pooping human alive, I’m excited to edit each backlogged post and share everything else I’m soon to experience with brand new eyes as Officially Mom.

Today, I write something new from a blank page. As the birth of this baby girl of mine nears closer every day, I realize that she, like me, will have her own dreams. That I am not just writing for me, anymore — but for us.

And I will keep on writing and writing and writing until everything she dreams of comes true.

Photo by Alexandrae Photo

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I hope that I can remind my daughter, in some way, every day, that she has been made with infinite love. The expansive kind that is wordless and illogical, like trying to understand the concept of a blackhole or how she came from nothing — and that she is now made for whatever calls to her. And not just when she’s a baby. But also when she’s 13, and 23, and 53.

Everything I have ever done in my own life is now getting a reset, I realize. That fact is the most astounding to me about matrescence. Childhood. Teenagerhood. Motherhood. I get to experience it all again anew while she experiences everything for the first time. And still, it will all look different for both of us.

I get to watch her learn where the tulips grow. Taste chocolate. Give a hug. Take a bath. Swat gnats and catch butterflies. Pick pumpkins and decorate Christmas trees. Brush hair. Snuggle puppies. Eat a freshly baked chocolate-frosted donut. Smell the sea. Touch dirt. Scrape knees. Discover. Explore. Become.

I feel my dreams expanding because of her mere existence. Words are pouring out of me like waterfalls. Poetry is melting in the palm of my hand in the hot summer sun and I’m letting it fall to linen papers to form sentences I’ve never seen before. She is new, and so am I, and so are the dreams we weave with each other.

I have a cesarean scheduled to bring her forth, giving me comfort in knowing when exactly I will meet her. She is either wildly stubborn in her breech position, playing mischievously with the cord wrapped precariously around her neck, or she’s protecting me from something I can’t see or know. Maybe both. She will ask me how she came into the world one day and I will say with peace. No one else will know any differently, and neither will she — she just needs to arrive, and I will be here waiting.

To her dreams, I say only that she has no limits. That she seizes upon the things that stir her soul and discards all the rest and that she trusts me to let me carry her burdens safely for her so she can be all that she wants, needs, is.

I wonder what she’s dreaming about right now in her squishy subconscious. I wonder what she’s tasting, feeling, hearing. I wonder if she thinks my laughter is a hurricane and if she’s enjoying her all-you-can-eat umbilical cord buffet.

I wonder if she has her dad’s eyes, or mine, or neither. If she has flaming red hair sprouts or a jet black two inches like I did when I came to be. I wonder if she will love the things I love. I wonder how long she will keep me awake in her first few months of life. I wonder if she will be another little ember in my fire or a dewdrop in my husband’s ocean.

I wonder what she will sound like. If she can sing. If she can dance. How she will chew. How many diapers she will make me change at 3am. How many times she will make me panic when she swallows a spaghetti noodle too fast.

I wonder how she will move her feet across the grass. How she will express herself. How she will come to know herself.

I sit here in wonder and hold my belly tight in anticipation of every dream I’ve ever had wiggling beneath my fingers, and hers, counting down the days until they intertwine.

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This world is buzzing with nearly 8 billion people. All have been born. All have had mothers with dreams of their own and for their children. All have undertaken this passage through a womb and to the light.

Some dreams are halted with the birth of a child. Some are born with them. Some are passed down through lineages and some are broken with independent choices from new generations seeking to carve their own paths.

We all have dreams for ourselves and we share in the dreams of our loved ones, but like Time, these dreams are fleeting. Like matrescence, everything is temporary.

So all we can do, I feel, is dream as big as we can and give space for others to do so until those dreams change form and become something new as we learn who we are and what we want and how we want to live.

I am becoming something new. I am watching as my dreams change. I am watching as they glitter and travel across late June skies into July when someone else will form new dreams of her own, and all I can do is hold them for her.

To the mothers, I can’t wait to join your club.

To my daughter, I can’t wait to watch you dream.

Xo,

Violet Carol

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More words from Violet Carol can be found on Instagram.

Older Mother Love Letters posts can be read here.

Mother Love Letters is a newsletter for intimate words on the messy and magical shared experiences of pregnancy and motherhood. If this post resonated with you, please feel free to “like” it, share it with a friend, or leave a comment to connect.