My Dearest One,

The first thing I want—no need—to tell you is that I love you oh so very much.

I can’t help thinking that you would be a girl. I’m one of seven girls, so I don’t know what it’s like to raise a boy. (Had you been a boy I would have been just as happy, just a tad surprised.) But I always dreamed I’d hold my sweet little girl in my arms…one day.

I was planning on giving you everything. Not necessarily materially, but the things that matter.

I’ve pictured you all ready for church, in dresses and cute shoes with your hair in pigtails and matching ribbons. But I also pictured you in Osh Kosh overalls, barefoot and playing in the mud, running up to me with various forms of newly-discovered wildlife or gifting me with a small fistful of random wildflowers, hair sticky from sweat and dirt, with the sparkle of discovery in the blue eyes that match my own.

I’ve pictured you lying in bed at night, smelling clean after your recent bath, hair still damp from washing, waiting for me to come read you your nightly bedtime story. I love children’s literature and I would have instilled that love in you. We would have started with the classics: Curious George, Babar, the Poky Little Puppy, the Cat in the Hat, and, of course, Madeline, the spunky little red-headed French girl and the other girls at Miss Clavel’s school.

You would remind me of Madeline.

So after graduating from high school, I set about making it—making YOU—happen.

In order to have this life, I would have to have the right father for you. And, call me old-fashioned, but I wanted your father to be my husband. Because that’s something else I wanted to give you, the most

stable home I could, with a mommy and daddy who love each other and are willing to go to the ends of the earth for their child. (Or children…you might have had sisters…or even brothers!)

So, I set about finding him.

Oh, there were a few potential candidates. A local farm boy with tanned skin and blue eyes…and a neuromuscular disorder he didn’t want to hand down to any children…would I be willing to adopt? At eighteen that wasn’t my dream, so I regretfully declined. (I saw him the other day at his father’s funeral. He met and married a girl who didn’t want children either. I am happy for him, but how ironic for me.)

There was the preacher boy I met in college. Curly brown hair, chocolate brown eyes, a rollicking sense of humor…but he decided I wasn’t what he wanted, so I left college still reeling from his rejection.

I almost gave up my dream of the ideal life for you and had you on my own. I had a partner who was willing to adjust his presence in your life to suit my whims, except he would not marry me. In hindsight he was immensely unsuitable, but I was getting desperate.

But not desperate enough.

I was well aware that plenty of women were having kids on their own and were getting along just fine. I also heard stories of unpaid child support, marginal day care, and lower educational performance. I determined that good enough wasn’t good enough.

Not for you, My Dearest.

By then I was only 30…still plenty of time…Mr. Good-Enough-to-be-Your-Daddy was just around the corner.

Or so I thought.

After all, I was doing this not just because it was best for you and me, but because I am a Christian and this is how God ordained it. All these other single mothers were, for lack of a better term, cheating. I was being the good girl, doing what God expected of me, so of course He would reward me with you, My Dearest, the Deepest Desire of my Heart.

So I didn’t worry about it.

I plunged myself into doing things at my church, like singing in the choir and teaching Sunday School. I do enjoy being around other children and what better place to meet Your Future Daddy than here, in God’s house, doing God’s work.

But he didn’t materialized here either.

Before I knew it, it was August of 2016. I was 46…cutting it close, but you still were a possibility.

Except, I was late.

I had no external reason to be, so I knew the only logical explanation was internal.

I have now been “late” for two years. If there is a remedy for this, I don’t know it. Not that it would do me any good, Your Potential Daddy still has not materialized. I have troubled deaf heaven with my bootless cries to no avail. It is time for me to face the harsh, brutal truth.

I will never bring you home. You will never be mine.

And so, it is with a very heavy heart (and tears in my eyes) that I write this letter to tell you, My Fondest Hope and Dream, good-bye. There’s to be no church dresses, no hair ribbons, no well-worn overalls, no pigtails, no bouquets of dandelions given with all the unabashed innocence of youth.

I have met several women who have had miscarriages, who mourn for the children they never got to hold. I’ve always thought that must be the hardest thing to have to live through. But now, I am almost jealous of these women, because they have a hope of meeting their children one day in the next life. But I don’t even have that.

Because you are…were…only a dream….

And now, that’s all you’ll ever be.

But please know that has never, ever kept me from loving you. In fact, I always will.

Love,

Mommy

Rachel Davin