five years old

Dear Wheels,

Today you are five. It's been more than two years since I wrote you one of these letters, but this seems to be kind of a momentous birthday for you. I have so many memories from when I was five, that I've become very conscious of the memories you may be laying down. And I want to commit some of my own memories of you.

You are waiting impatiently for the arrival of a new brother or sister, although it's still (probably) more than three months away. I asked you other day if you thought a boy or a girl might be more fun for you than the other. (Everyone keeps asking me if you have a preference but it's not something we've really talked about.) You said you thought a girl would be more fun. When I asked why, you said because girls can have babies. Now, you say you can see in my belly and that it's a girl.

You've spent quite a bit of the pregnancy, and the time before, grieving that you aren't a girl. You really, really wish you had a uterus so you could grow a baby of your own. You don't yet know that daddies have a role in making babies.

But life is tangled with death, as ever. We are expecting our cat to die soon. Her right back leg stopped working just before Christmas and her right front leg seemed to die a couple of weeks ago. The vet thinks it's a tumour on her spine, and eventually, we don't know when, it will affect her other legs and she won't be able to move. So we had to start preparing you for her death. When I told you, of course you asked what happens when we die. (I can't BELIEVE I didn't prepare for that! Of course you would ask.) I was straight with you, as I always am. I said that people don't really know and people believe different things, but that I believe our spirit, who we truly are inside, separates from our body and goes to another world where spirits hang out. I told you we usually bury the body, like we did with the two dead chipmunks we discovered by our back door last fall.

And you said, "I think the spirit looks for a mummy with a baby in her tummy."

And that kinda floored me.

And then I remembered that I believe in reincarnation too. I've often thought that I'm my father's father reincarnated - for various reasons, not least among them that when my mom first saw me after I was born, she thought so.

I told you, "You know, that makes a lot of sense. I bet you're right." (Not that I really want our cat to become our baby - truthfully I've been waiting for her to die ever since a parasite caused her to spray diarrhea all over the house when you were six weeks old. But in the last year, I've realized how fond you are of her and how well you treat her, and I've changed my tune.)

It struck me that you would be closer to the experience of being a spirit looking for a baby than me. And I remembered how about a year ago you asked where you were before you got in my tummy. And once again, I didn't have an answer. I told you that I didn't know.

Anyways, the vet gave the cat a shot of steroids, and it seems to have really helped her. She's walking much better - she can actually get around - and she's being sociable and eating ok. So I think it may actually be a while before she dies. I'm probably kind of in denial. But the other morning, you said, "I think she's sad because she's going to die."

When I was about this pregnant with you, my grandma died. The last time I saw her I wore my favourite maternity shirt, which made me look like I'd swallowed a pumpkin (it was very near Halloween). I was hoping the sight of my belly would inspire her to stay here so she could meet you (of course I didn't know it was YOU then, but...). But she was already only half in this world, I could tell. She was ready to go. I'm sure she was sad to leave us, but she was tired. She'd lost so many of her loved ones, she was pretty much the last of her generation, and she was done.

So I told you this, the other day. That I think when people die, they're usually ready to go, and not really sad about dying. That it's those of us who are left who are most sad. And I cried while I told you this and remembered my grandma and how sad I remain that she didn't get to meet you (damn these pregnancy hormones -- they're making me cry now too, writing this). You cried a little bit too, and we had a good cuddle.

Five years ago from this very moment, I was being wheeled into the operating room to have you cut from my belly. When you asked a couple of years ago how you got out of my belly, I was kind of glad, in a way, to tell you that the doctor cut my stomach to get you out. Somehow it seemed easier than telling you how most babies are born. But I did tell you that most babies aren't born that way, and again about a month or so ago, when you asked how big the hole would be to get this baby out. I said I didn't know if this baby would be cut out, and that even if it was they wouldn't cut a hole. It would just be a line. You got very upset that you wouldn't get to see inside my stomach. Even more when I told you you probably wouldn't be allowed into the operating room if they had to.

My mind is turning increasingly to the birth of this baby, to memories of your birth. The other morning I read your birth story for the first time in probably more than four years. It had a lot of details I'd forgotten. My biggest memories are how scared I was, throughout my labour, that you wouldn't live. And how much it hurt after I was forced to lie down, because standing or sitting caused your heart rate to plummet. And the unbearably long, long silence between when the anesthesiologist said quietly, "It's a boy," and your first glorious cry that was the most beautiful song I'd ever heard.

I didn't stop shaking until they brought you to me maybe two hours after the surgery. I'd forgotten that they took you away again after that, for something close to five hours I wrote in your birth story. When I think about my reasons for attempting a VBAC with this baby, that seven hours of separation is what I think I will hold onto. I think we spent your first two years making up for those seven hours. But now you are a confident, articulate child. You didn't struggle much with the transition to school, beyond the fact that it's hard work for you and you don't particularly LIKE working all day. You've told me repeatedly you just want to play all day. I get it, I really do. I haven't told you that you have about sixty more years to go of it. Who knows, maybe you'll find another path.

I love hearing about your thoughts and how you see the world. Like when you forgot how long it takes to grow a baby, about a month after telling your entire class in daycare and all your friends' parents that it takes nine months. You told me you'd put the detail in your one-day mind instead of your forever mind, which was why you'd forgotten.

This letter is more about me than you, and I'm sorry. But I've been really wanting to record some of these conversations we've been having, and the keen insights you share. You think about things in a way I'm not sure other just-five-year-olds think. It seems to me you know more about things, you make deeper connections between things. But maybe I'm biased.

Wherever your spirit was before you joined us, whoever you were and whenever it was, precisely, that you joined us, I thank you for picking us. Life with you is more everything than it ever was before.

Love Mom