Column: Savagemama

Letter to Eliza June

By Jennifer Savage, 6-20-08

My Sweet Eliza June,

Tonight you fell asleep with your hand under my cheek. We lay there together as you wiggled yourself still. I watched the curve of your nose, the thin line of your lips. I tried to memorize your tiny face in the early summer light as your eyelids grew heavy.

You are my girl.

And you are becoming your own little person. You are gentle with other children, you pat them on the back and offer toys with a “deyego.” You want nothing more than to be outside and take you shoes off as soon as get there. You walk barefoot in the grass. You point to the goats from the window and pull two tiny fistfuls of grass to give to the horse at the fence. You call me “Mommy,” Seth “Da Da,” Imogene “Mo Mo” and Lyle “Aisle.” He’s your favorite, Lyle. 

You crawl into bed with me in the mornings and for a minute or two, I think you are going back to sleep. Then you flop over on your hands and knees and say, “hey” or “dog” or “mama.” You are ready to get up, ready for your “oget” and blueberries, ready to see your baby dolls, wrap them in blankets or diapers that are too big.

You are ready for anything.

Some mornings you pull up my shirt to see my belly button, flattened and stretched as it is. You rub your hand across my expanding middle, then hug it with both hands. You lay your head on me and say, “baby.” You say, “love.”

The last few months I’ve been trying to make sure you have everything you’ll need once the baby comes. A room of your own, summer clothes, grandparent visits lined up well in advance, a new sandbox. I make list after list wracking my brain for anything that may help you transition into being a big sister, anything that could ease, if even for a little while, the stunning isolation you might feel from suddenly not being the only one. No matter how many lists I make, the one thing I know I can’t give you is what you are used to – 100 percent of me.

This omission makes any list seem incomplete so I keep making them hoping something else can fill the hole that will inevitably be left by my new attention to other things. Middle of the night feedings, another set of tiny hands and feet to care for.

I’m not sure how either of us is going to handle it.

But we will. Because you are open and loving, because I am your mama and always will be.

You, little one, will still have all of me, whole heart, curled up next you, breathing in your breath. I’ll push your curls out of your eyes and whisper to you that your heart is big enough for another baby and mine is too.

Together, we’ll make it work and lay here curved toward each other, your hand under my cheek until we figure out how.

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