Love Letters to the Great Unknown

Through your eyes

And yet, where I have been

You are so small, my love, when you begin. Your importance and potential cause the world to shake, the heavens to open up, and an outpouring of wonder, fear, and worry in seemingly equal measure. You are the product of nature’s most basic, and most complex systems, propagation thanks to oscillation and collision. You are not always planned, but even when you are, the chaos that you bring is a vision of the infinite. The mysteries of the Universe are held in your tiny hands, before you have even drawn your first external breath. I’m in constant awe of you, baby.

Before you are expelled from the hopefully comfortable den of hormones, nutrients, and genetic material that your gestation is fraught with, I want you to understand just how much the world gains from your arrival. Those who come before you are, more often than not, driven by deep psychological and biological circumstances where you will be concerned. For most, even if you were a surprise to them, even if your arrival causes complications that require heartache and pain to be overcome, you are loved in ways that defy all other reason, an ember to be cradled in the palms of hands of humans whose eyes will leak with unspeakable emotions.

Every day you wake, those unspeakable emotions are compounded, attached to fleeting blips of time - your first smile, your first laugh, the shift in your wailing when that is the only method for you to convey the complex discomforts of a being whose every calorie is expended on exponential expansion of self. Hours into days, days into months, months into years, you will spread upward and outward -- physically, mentally, and emotionally, and the vastness of your being is never greater than when you are at your smallest. The world you have inherited is so big, and you are so small yet, unable to navigate the cosmos that collaborated to bring you into being without the assistance of the charmed larger creatures who tend to your care. You are too small yet to know what it means to worry, but please don’t do that -- every waking hour you will come to know your surroundings with greater ease.

There is a world of adults who envy you, little bean, as you spend your day coddled and cuddled, fed at your request, doted upon by most every human you encounter when your caregivers take you on adventures, napping whenever the urge strikes and more than all of this - fiercely protected at every turn. Perhaps you have a sibling, or many siblings, and their joy on Earth is compounded, other emotions complicated, by your presence, creating a string of ecstatic beauty that exponentially increases as time flows forever forward. I know, you may not always understand them, or they you, but with you, everything is and will be better.

I promise, yon sparkling sprout, that the troubles you will inherit, which will be numerous and varying in size, will quiver and fall before your intellect, your charm, and your kind heart. That your laughter will be the balm to soothe an innumerable array of humans, and the ripples of your endless search for answers to questions big and small will inspire learning in people near and far. Your exploration of the universe will be limited only by the boundaries you break with a word or a look. Your heart will swell with pride, and be broken too many times to remember, and your spirit will soar, be crushed by external forces, and soar again. This great, green Earth will be your playground, your tormentor, your teacher, and your guide. You will find and lose yourself in its splendor and its squalor.

The humans who shelter you, who bring food to your mouth, from whom your words and your ideals will be formed, will cycle through your life to be heroes and villains and sometimes both in equal measure. They will uplift you, vex you, challenge you, and disappoint you, and yet for all of that, you will be loved, always. Remember that your first goals and actions in this world were selfish, but purely so, and to carry that concept through the remainder of your days, to care for your needs, simply and quickly, so that when you branch out to caring for the needs of others, you do so with your best self.

I treasure the idea of you, in all your forms, with or without the ability to be or do. You are perfect from the onset, sweet child, and as the sun rises and sets in your life, you only become more engaging and incredible. As your senses sharpen, you will meet millions of new combinations of experiences, and share those experiences with the humans in your proximity in ways that will center them on seeing the universe through your gaze, if only for a moment. I wish, with all my heart and soul, that I could share these moments with you also, because I crave the freshness, the vigor, and the focus with which you will leap through your surroundings.

Come forth, new being, and remake the world with every breath, every tear, every drop of blood spilt from skinned knees, and know that the world, in return, will provide you the exultant resplendence that you will mold into your own, like a mud pie, leaving the grime of life under your fingernails and the irrevocable spread of a smile on your cherubic face. I, and the Universe, will love you until there is no integer to express the time that has passed. We are not prepared for you, but we are eager for your potential to be realized.