To love those you haven’t met yet

Today, while tapping away at the keyboard and writing the Autumn-Winter 21/22 collection section “Why will it all be like this?”, I unexpectedly (or perhaps quite typically for me) got carried away.

Because… I remembered my childhood “autumns” with cranberry picking in what adults considered lovely bogs, but which, to my child’s mind, were pits that could swallow children without a trace, with potato diggers, and a horse led each year across fields that seemed endless to me—both fascinating and frightening at the same time. Its massive “teeth” in the bridle looked bigger than my palms.

I recalled so many childhood things that differ from how I see the world now, as day differs from night. How vast the world seemed. How many questions had answers that were technically wrong but wonderfully sweet.

How much remained unseen, untouched, misunderstood, and magical.

Soon my thoughts turned to my own children. After all, they see the world completely differently than we adults do. Their minds are spinning with countless unanswered questions—some reach our ears, others they find or invent themselves.

I dive into photos of DO and PA’s babyhood and childhood, and I feel a rainbow of smiles stretching across my face.

Those chubby little hands.
Those feet shaped like buns.

Those eyes, half-open, covered with thick curtains of eyelashes,
those tousled hair mounds… and the memory of how I used to carry them in my arms.
How I would rock them until they fell asleep.

Don’t get me wrong. I am happy and proud of how grown-up they are. Independent and clever. Already capable of taking care of themselves and helping me with their younger siblings.

But at the same time… I gently caress my belly, flailing in all four directions of the world, which has been the HOME of a new little human for over seven months.
I let my thoughts swing freely.

What will his eyes be like?
And his hair?
Who will he resemble?

Will he be as kind-hearted as his brother DO?
Or as sharp and quick-witted as his sister PA?

There’s this feeling, like I am waiting to meet someone I love deeply but haven’t seen in a long time. Only this time, I correct myself…
I miss THE ONE I haven’t even met yet.
And I already love HIM so intensely.

With my eyes closed, I seem to sense that scent that DO and PA carried in those first days we met many years ago.
I remember those impossibly tiny feet.
And the little fingers that clutch your single finger with an entire handful.
From memory, the first four-eyed meeting also emerges.

When we, as mothers, with wide eyes and held breath, and THEY, through narrow slits of their eyes, meet and we understand that we will be LIFETIMES for each other.

I caress my fluttering belly.
And I thank the generous fate for the joy of being a home once again.

V.