April
25th, 2008 marked an important day in my life: my son was born! He
turned 9 yesterday. He is full of life, joy, kindness and every single
adjective you can add related to love. This blog is dedicated to him. I found
in my old files a letter I wrote in 2006 to my future child not knowing if I
ever was going to have him or not. Here it is:
“To
Little Mary or Little Justin:
Hello
baby. Here I am writing to you a letter so you know that you were planned. I don’t
know if I should write to you in English or Spanish, but I guess your dad will
translate this to you so you can understand it. To be honest I have never been
sure if I want to be a mom. There are days that I want and others not. I am
very happy with your dad with the way things are. You will know him some day.
Your
dad and I are extremely silly. We love being together, we like watching TV, we
pretend to be babies and we love our freedom, and that’s why we don’t have you
yet. At the same time we want you with us so we can see who you will be when you
are grown up. We are curious because your dad and I are very different
physically and culturally.
Even
not knowing if you will be ever born, we have already given you names, but they
might change. If you are a girl, we want to call you Patricia Elisa, and if you
are a boy Oso Patrick. This last name caused some discussions with friends. But
at the end, I am the mother and I can put whatever name I want. When you are
18, you can change it if you want.
Today
is March 1st, 2006 and I want to write to you, so that when you are
older you can see how I felt. I have to tell you that I am terrified of having
you naturally. I really don’t know why, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you.
I am 31 years old, and I should have had you long time ago, but I still have so
much to do with your dad by ourselves. Time is running out, and soon we will
have insurance, so I guess the time is coming soon.”
And
that was it for that letter. 16 months later I got pregnant and 9 months later
the baby was born. Those 16 months were preparation. Yes, my husband got a
teaching job, and we got health insurance, which helped with the cost of
delivery. In July 2007, we went on the Inca Trail in Peru as our last crazy
adventure before deciding to get pregnant. I found a doctor who would
understand my fear of delivery, so I was sure I wanted a c-section. And I kept
journaling in a little notebook, which right now is unreachable, but I will
look for it when it is time to rearrange the basement and see what else I wrote
there and share it with you.
I
am very surprised as I was writing this blog. It looks like I was not planning
to raise my kid bilingual, which I am surprised because I swear that was the
plan. So who knows? But at the end, when he was here with us, I tried my best
to raise him bilingual, and it didn’t work for me. It worked for many people;
I’m not sure if I didn’t try hard or what, but I accept that fact and I keep
going. He knows very basic Spanish, and every day I still try to introduce my first
language into his life.
So
which name did we pick? We named him Osso Patrick Siddall. Originally he was
going to be Oso, but many people in my family did not agree with that name
because “oso” means bear. So I agreed to change it a little bit. My son carries
his name with pride, and hopefully he still will in the future. I have loved
bears for a long time; they are strong but cute, and I feel the same way about
my son.
Did
we lose our freedom having him? The freedom changed. We still travel and go
out, but not as often as before, but we are okay with that. It was time to
create a new chapter in our lives, and we are very happy we did it.
He
is an old soul; he is our teacher who constantly reminds us of what love means.
He understands our fears and goes with it patiently. He expresses his opinion
in the most kindly matter. He is mature and silly, he loves life, himself and
God. He dreams every day about the world being in total harmony, and that’s why
he makes comics according to him.
He
has complained a couple of times what is not fair, especially when it is about
not having a birthday party. To give you an example, he had birthday parties
his first 3 years. When he was 1, I rented a shelter at a park; the night
before the party, I found out the playground was being remodeled. I totally
freaked out, but angels are always around, and a friend of mine saved us and
lent us her new house to celebrate there. The second year, we did it in another
park, and a blizzard came, temperatures dropped and we barely played and sang
“Happy Birthday” before it was time to go. The third year I was not going to
put up with parks and weather conditions, so I planned the party at an indoor
place to do a martial arts class. What could go wrong? Well, nobody arrived to
open the place. The person who was going to give the class had a seizure. Having
many people waiting outside, I just made a quick decision, and moved the party
to the closest park.
After
3 years of planning parties and going so different from the way I planned them,
I decided not to do anymore birthday parties. Every year I convinced Osso to
just do something between us, and that is what we did for the next 5 years. But
he is growing, he makes his own decisions and this year he said that he will have a party. So he will have a
tiny party at my house, and guess what: I am not invited! LOL. Which I am fine
with; with me there, the kids probably won’t have as much fun, so I will be
gone for a couple of hours.
I
just wanted to share with you a little bit of my story, my planning, my fears,
and my reality. When this blog is published, we will already have had his
birthday, and I am sure it will be a great one again, full of balloons and
love.
Whatever
is your story, with kids or not, don’t forget to live, laugh and love. To
trust, to accept your fears and let them go. Your TrueSelf will appreciate it.
I will see you next Wednesday; if you don’t see me it is because I had a heart attack
after the birthday party seeing how my tiny townhome with 7 boys ended up!
Happy birthday son
Me
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