Lucy, My Diamond In the Sky

In my possession is a little, purple, faux leather bound book that I bought in 2008 when I was pregnant with a little bean who would become my Lucy. I bought it to record my thoughts when I was going through this strange, new experience, and also to write down a little bit of history for this little addition to my wonderful family. I wrote down a few thoughts on my pregnancy, but they weren't gushing through my head like I thought they would. The real mind work and soul-searching, I'd find out, would come later. I never really got the history part worked out either, but of course, that is still there and progressing. In fact the book has become more about the history of Lucy, the Lucy Chronicles, if you will.

There are, in this book, a lot of dates. The approximate date she was conceived: early July 2008. The date of our first ultrasound: August 8, 2008 (6 weeks). The date I rubbed baby bellies with Erykah Badu at the Austin City Limits Music Festival: September 27, 2008. "And on and on" through last month, when Lucy began walking in shoes. There are even a few pages of her eat-sleep-poop logs from my shaky, sleep-addled, first few weeks as a parent. I've logged the milestones of hers, my first pregnancy, and all kinds of "firsts" she might be curious about later, and I'll keep logging them until she's old enough to remember them for herself.

There are also pearls of advice from me, her mother, that she may or may not find valuable later. There are lessons I want her to learn, things I want her to know, information I want her to have. When she becomes a woman I will pass this little book on to her and hope she can learn from it all the things she is teaching me without even knowing it. And I guess I'll just keep adding to this book whatever I feel it needs for the next seventeen years or so, which suddenly doesn't sound like enough time. It's funny how eighteen years sounds like so much time to a new parent or a prospective parent. Seventeen years doesn't sound like much time at all. I was in junior high seventeen years ago, and that feels like last week sometimes.

So that's all the time I have left to turn this child into a woman. I know it will fly by faster than I can imagine even now. I think all I can do is to keep turning to this little, purple book, and to remember what I wrote one week before I finally met the little creature it's all about: You've already made me happier than ever before just by giving me the experience of bringing you from the universe. It still applies. She makes me a little bit happier every day, just because of who she is, the best gift my husband could ever have given me.