Dear Baby Who Doesn’t Exist

I don’t know what you call an emotion that you feel towards a human being who does not exist anywhere but the imagination.  I don’t know if you can call that love . . . I’m not sure you can feel real love towards a theoretical person.

But it feels a lot like love. I think about you often. I wish that you were here with me, and that we could be together instead of being separated by this troublesome problem of your lack of material reality. I sense your absence, and it hurts me. I feel an empty spot in my life without you. I dream about holding you and kissing you, and I pray for God to grant you everything that you long for . . . You know, all that stuff that ordinary people feel for their real-live loved ones.

Today is the one year and sixth month anniversary of the day that Ben (your would-be future father) and I decided we didn’t want to wait any longer to welcome you into existence. But alas, it turns out that our deciding meant very little. We have not yet stopped waiting.

If you ever end up being a real person — if you miraculously relocate from the imaginary world to the real world — I want you to know how long and how anxiously I waited for you.

While I came into my mother’s life quite by accident, and before she even realized she wanted me there, I have already spent countless months worrying that you will never cross into the real world. I have worried that you will remain an abstract idea for all of eternity, and I have spent innumerable tearful nights mourning over that possibility.

If God ever does give you permission to enter the material world, I want you to know that I intend to love your fiercely. I will love you the second I’m aware that you’ve arrived, even if you’re still only a little cluster of cells inside of me. I will try not to smother you with my affection — which may be hard, given how long and anxiously I’ve waited — but I will try to give you enough space to become a whole person on your own.

For now I am trying my best to give you a good home inside my body, in case you ever decide to take up residence there. I’m trying to get all the right amounts of nutrients to feed and nourish you, just in case, and keeping my body healthy so that you are as comfortable as possible during you stay. I have learned all I can about how to make a good home for a baby inside my body, in preparation of your possible arrival.

I am also working hard at becoming a whole person without you, so that if you ever arrive, you will have a more fully complete person as a mother. I can’t expect you to complete me. That’s an impossible and selfish thing to ask of you.

I have learned so much in your absence. I continue to learn so much about my body, about God and prayer and work and relationships and art . . . it has been a big year. You will be glad to know that I have grown up a lot in the year and a half that I have been waiting for you. So has Ben. And we’ve learned a lot about each other, and about marriage, too.

But alas . . . I will waste no more time writing to a person who doesn’t exist. That’s what crazy people do. I am trying really hard not to be a crazy person. I’m told it’s not healthy, and that folks tend not to be over-fond of crazy people. But I can’t promise I won’t waste any more tears on you, even as you remain imaginary.

I guess all this is just to say, for the record, that I’m ready to love you at a moment’s notice. In fact, I feel I already love you, even though as of now you have no body, no voice, nor any of those other things that make people lovable in the traditional sense. Maybe that makes me crazy. What is a girl to do?

Love,

(how do I sign off on this? Your maybe-future-mother?)

Kathleen

P.S.  In the meantime, I hope you don’t mind me lavishing my love and affection on a beautiful, smart little puppy named Narnia. Besides being playful, fluffy and warm, she has this charming quality called material existence that I find irresistible. You may have to share a little bit of my affection with her, if you ever come around, simply because she was here first.

P. P. S. I just realized something, a few hours after writing this, while I was driving to a friend’s house: talking to you has parallels to prayer. Like you, God has no physical body, no audible voice, etc.; yet I’m expected to love him and have conversations with him. Maybe I’m not so crazy after all.