"dear you"

dear christopher or christina,

i've always loved names with Christ in them. it's funny because i was never very religious, which you could've guessed by now, but the way the word "Christ" looked on a page was beautiful, i thought. i still do. it has an archaic feel to it; i always imagine it in faded script, the name of the Son of God who died for our sins. i guess i'm more religious now than i ever was or at least more aware of my sins.

the window in front of me is streaked with drops of rain and has been for the past three days. perhaps, that's why i'm writing now. because of the rain and how it reminds me of you.

"you." if i knew who you'd turn out to be or knew you were actually a "you" when i conceived you in my womb, then i imagine "you'd" be sitting on the empty blue, fabric couch in the living room, watching television drowning out the pitter, patter of rain drizzling the windows with your sitcoms, reality shows, or baseball games. or perhaps you'd be practicing an instrument. guitar. i like guys who play guitar. i also like girls who are musical. girls are better suited for the piano. my mother thought so too, or maybe she conditioned me to believe it by forcing me to take lessons. i can still remember being bent over the mahogany piano that my mother had bought brand new, stretching my little fingers as far as i could to hit the right notes at the right time to produce something mellifluous. but my best practices echoed through the air with cacophonous intensity into my mother's disappointed ears. i wouldn't have wanted that for you.

but who knows. you could've been talented. you could've been good at everything i was bad at. i didn't understand my mother's incessant nagging that i take up another instrument after i gave up on the piano. i was only nine years old, but mother panicked, afraid the window for discovering my talents was rapidly closing.

i tried my hand at stringed instruments: the violin, cello, even the harp. but i wasn't fit for music, so my mother imagined that i was harboring some secret artistic ability in my hands. so she hired an art tutor, a poor art school student, who would guide my left hand with hers to draw a fat elephant with cylindrical legs and feet, big, flappy ears, and a snake-like trunk. she hoped that by guiding my hands along, i'd learn to draw like her. her hands were like training wheels waiting to be taken off when i learned to balance the pencil by myself, drawing the same smooth curves, and shading in the dark and light lines of the elephant to show depth. i never did. i liked how easy it was to just let her guide my pencil and effortlessly produce such pretty drawings.   

i never did find my talent. but i found your father when i was 15, who last i heard was working as a mechanic back in our hometown. he was a handsome boy with light brown hair and green eyes, a high bridged nose and thin lips that he liked to constantly keep moist with his tongue. i called him by his middle name, Chris, even though everyone else called him by his first, Pete. that was special to me. he made me feel like the talent i didn't have. our relationship felt so natural. when he swept my hair back and told me he loved me, i wanted to give him everything. and i thought that it would be enough.

i thought that it would be enough that one, wet afternoon, he climbed up and through my window drenched in the summer downpour. as he looked at me with piercing, green eyes he told me that he wanted all of me and that he would make me feel special. because i was. peeling off his soaked shirt, i gave him my all.

his last words to me were, "i'll see you around." and he left, climbing out the same window that he had crept in through. the next few weeks were a blur of tears and confusion as i wondered where he had gone, why he hadn't bothered to talk to me since that rainy day. then the nausea came. and the vomiting. i had to look for him when i suspected that there was life inside of me. i even harbored a secret hope that this would yoke me and your father together. when i told him i was pregnant with you, he denied that you were his. he denied me and told me to stay away because he didn't know me. i should've known then. i should've known that you  weren't just a mistake. maybe you weren't his, but you were mine. 

but i was blind.

i didn't see you as anything, just a violation of me, not a part of me, so i let you go. i let you go before you took one breath and i let you go before i could know you.

i'm sorry.

even if i've said it a thousand times, it wouldn't be enough, but i need you to know that i am truly and completely sorry.

i'm sorry that you couldn't hear your name called by your own mother, that you never uttered any words, that you never fully came to be.

forgive me, please. i know i don't deserve it, but i need your forgiveness. i need you.

this apartment is empty without you. my closets overflow with pairs of designer shoes, my kitchen with pots and pans that i don't even use, my bedroom where i sleep alone. i wonder where all this time has gone and i wonder if the greatest punishment is having never gotten to have you or no longer having the opportunity to grow a life inside me. it seems that the window has closed.

i like to think that my greatest talent was yet to be discovered in your birth, in being a mother.

Christopher. Christina.


Love,

Mom

xxx

an O after our first date,

another O, maybe a X on a cheek after,

the latter depending on your comfort.

i don't want to force it. or force you.

i want to earn your X and swear an

oath to you, so that all our days

will be spent XOXOing in love

and intimacy to the glory of God.

why don't we seal our oath with an X?

i'm afraid that my XXX obsession will

rear its head to tempt me, to rip me from

from your O.

but i pray that God will change me, that i

will fight for you. the only XXX i want is

with you on our marriage bed. i want to

X you everywhere, my lips scaling every

inch of skin on your body, to O you in my

arms as you fall asleep. i hope these X's

and O's will be the overflow of love from

God to us and from us to our children.

i will keep these X's and O's to myself until

we are bound together and i pray that our lives

together will be like pi, 3.14..., and be filled with

endless

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOs...