My Baby

Dear Lydia Claire,

Do you know how many prayers I’ve whispered for you? Did you know that the first day I realized you were mine, I couldn’t stop smiling? I ran to the mirror, and pulled up my shirt and stared in awe, my hands cupping my stomach. I couldn’t move. The immensity of you coming into this world stunned me. I stood there, staring at our reflection. My mind raced with ideas of what you would look like, dear. In that instant, you became mine. You, so precious, so tiny, I couldn’t imagine anything else ever being as important as you.

My baby, each night that you were mine, I fell asleep, my arms cradled around you. Every day you became more and more real. Some days I cried, you were going to be born into a world of struggling and abuse and lies.

I want to explain to you, dear one, who your father is. He is a young man named Scott Summers. I have a hard time finding words. He is alive, vibrant. When he is excited, everyone else is excited too. He is a marine biologist. I believe you have his eyes, big, with dark lashes and pure woodsy green. He is Italian, yet more irish blood ran in his veins than anyone I’d ever met. He has a laugh like a wild animal, crazy and huge and somehow spooky, like a wood sprite. He is Oberon.

We used to run through the woods at night, completely naked, our hands clasped, the full moon shining our way. I never felt tired on nights like those. We’d run and chase and collapse to the ground, our bodies wrapped in one another. He’d love me like a demon, gentle, then violent, teasing and touching.

I hope that you are as free as we were on nights like those. We were young. We thought we were infinite. How could a love like that end? He thrilled me in every way possible. His voice enraptured me from the first “hello”.

It was at the New London Theatre. I walked in late and took the first empty seat I saw, which was next to a dark-haired boy with a creamy olive complexion. I had fallen for him in an instant. We were but children ourselves when we met. Fourteen. Much too young to understand what love is. “This is life before you know who you’re gonna be” as Taylor Swift says in her song, Fifteen.

It was a fairytale romance for two years. I have no better words. Fairytales. We kissed in the rain. He carved me a gold heart necklace. He called me “Love” in that rough, playful voice. Each day I saw him, joy would pound in my veins. I would run and leap and wrap myself around him, unable to mesh my heart close enough to his. We danced around the kitchen, making waffles, on sunny mornings, singing Irish drinking songs.

The unending joy built and built to a zenith, on valentines day, 2010. He got down on one knee, singing “Marry me, Juliet, you’ll never have to be alone, I love you and that’s all I really know, I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress, it’s a love story, baby, just say ‘yes’,” That night, I said yes, and I thought my world was complete. I had no idea how much more complete it would be with you, my angel. I thought that nothing could tear me apart.

Yet then, in just six weeks, you were ripped from me. I cried in vain, the blood was red, your blood, nothing could bring you back. Dead. I swear I died June that day too. I know that you’re in heaven. How could you not be? You were the most beautiful girl will ever know. I would have moved mountains to save you.

Yet in the end, all I could do was clean up your blood and treasure your memory, Lydia Claire Summers. You embody all that is glorious about endless summer love. Like Beloved from Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, you are memory of all the good that passed between Scott and I. You are the only one that will ever remember it.

“Everyone would remember Peter for nineteen minutes of his life, but what about the other nine million? Lacy would be the keeper of those, because it was the only way for that part of Peter to stay alive. For every recollection of him that involved a bullet or a scream, she would have a hundred others …She would string them together - the moments when her child had been just like other people's. She would wear them, precious pearls, every day of her life; because if she lost them, then the boy she had loved and raised and known would really be gone.” From Nineteen Minute’s by Jodi Picoult.

My Child, you are the bearer of the memories of Scott, each memory that is not tainted by bruises and fists and lies. You are the beautiful memory. I allow the rest to swirl into darkness. Except for you, my baby, you will live on in my mind, a shining beacon, your bright green eyes lit with hope, a single candle lit in memory of what used to be.

I will be forever yours,

Your mom,

Ren