Dear Ace,
Your name isn't really "Ace." We aren't sharing your real name before you arrive. In the meantime, your Aunt Lindsay informed me that no matter what we name you, she's going to call you Ace. According to her diabolical plan (all her plans are diabolical), you will prefer Ace to any name we could possibly give you, so you'll introduce yourself as Ace, inspiring other kids to spontaneously high five you for having such a cool name. We are not convinced that this is how the moniker will play out...but we decided not to fight it since it makes an excellent code name while you're in utero. So your entire extended family and all our friends call you Ace. I'm not at all confident that we'll be able to change your name in August, no matter what we put on the birth certificate.
I'm pleased that our accidental life planning gives you a cool birthplace to match your cool nickname. You see, whenever we entered or exited the States in the last few years, we had to write our birthplaces down for border control. I found it disheartening to jot down my po-dunk little town from No Where, New Jersey. So our first official gift to you is the ability to write "San Francisco" whenever you're asked for your birthplace. It's a city that everyone knows, an international destination. The only way it could be better is if it was London, but I lost the battle to stay there. So instead we're saving you the trouble of people presuming you should have a British accent for the rest of your life. You're welcome.
I'm also quite pleased about the timing of your birth. It was bizarrely important to me that you have a birthday at one of several times of year. I realize this is an odd thing to think about at all, particularly because I have no faith in the zodiac or anything, but I think it's cool that we get to throw you a summer birthday party every year. There is also a selfish motivation on my part, because I grew up with pool parties and outdoor scavenger hunts for my Labor Day birthday--I used to think this was just awesome, but now I'm pretty sure that Mom was relieved she could kick the horde of noisy little kids out of her house and into her pool. I look forward to taking that same initiative eventually.
Meanwhile, I owe you some thanks for putting an end to the unadulterated torture of early pregnancy. I'm not going to lie: I was pretty irritated with you for a while there, what with the ceaseless food aversions and nausea and vomiting and fainting that I feared would last all forty weeks or possibly until you go to kindergarten. At one point, my doctor said, "Some women are relieved when pregnancy makes them sick, because it's a sign that--" I cut her off before she could finish, because no, that heinous combination of symptoms is never a relief in my book. So it was a smart move on your part to call a halt to that about ten weeks ago and start behaving like a decent little fetus. It was also smart to start bopping about around the same time, since it indicated I had accomplished
something during all that time I spent curled around the base of the toilet. Well played, Ace, well played.
Of course, now you won't stop bopping around or practicing kung fu or doing pirouettes or whatever it is you're up to. Sometimes, it's pretty clear that you appreciate a particular food I've delivered to you via placenta. For the record, you have a distinct fondness for avocado and oatmeal (though to my knowledge, not together). I also initially thought you had a thing for sugar, because brownies were the first thing that consistently made you do a little jig...but you had zero reaction to cake or pie the other week. You are also unimpressed with berries of any kind, so your dad may request a paternity test following your birth. The point is, brownies are totally your thing.
Like just about any fetus I've heard of, you like when I'm up and moving and rocking you to sleep--pilates, walking, elliptical-ing, etc. It was comical in Yosemite--you'd stay perfectly still while I was hiking, but each pause or water break woke you up and sent you tapping at my bellybutton. Every. Single. Time. As if you were letting me know, "Hey! Make with the rocking!" This behavior has me slightly fearful about your expectations for being rocked and walked when you're ex utero.
Of course, lots of things have me slightly fearful about your fast-approaching arrival. I fear that I won't handle the sleep deprivation well, that I don't have enough patience, that we'll raise a kid in a country where every little dispute over parenting turns into a "mommy war" or "mommy battleground" (somehow, the diminutive "daddy" never appears in these headlines) rather than a "private choice" or "personal decision." I'm fearful that all the fear-mongering about pregnancy in this country (which is so much more phobia-inducing and unreasonable than it was when I was pregnant in the UK) only develops into even more fear-mongering about caring for infants (don't even get me started on the racket surrounding the bogus cord blood banking advertisements that arrive in the mailbox).
But I've never, ever spent a second fearing you, who you'll be, how you'll challenge us and overjoy us and change our lives in ways we can't yet understand. I've seen so many of our friends turn into parents, and I longed for that, but I can't say that I ever had baby fever or a ticking biological clock, per se. I saw them grow their own independent little families, saw roles shift as wives took on motherhood, husbands took on fatherhood, and kids became siblings whether they knew it or not. Not one of them did it perfectly--they each did it in their own messy, fascinating way, building their own messy, fascinating families. And it was gorgeous every single time.
That, that right there is what I look forward to most: you get to start our family, and I look forward to all the mess and all the fascination.
No pressure or anything.
Love,
The Hiking Brownie-Provider
