I bought a baby blanket yesterday. It's a soft blue plush, with white polka dots. It's the first thing I've bought for my coming baby, the first piece for the nursery I will surely use.
The moment I first realized I was going to have a baby, I was sitting in an Einstein Bagel store, somewhere in northern Atlanta, on a rainy Saturday. My hands closed over my coffee cup in a gesture of surprise, as if I had to hold on to something.
"I'm going to have a baby!" I said to our home study agent, toward the middle of our meeting. The words just slipped right out of me.
"In nine to twelve months, you will be placed with a baby," she assured me, without a doubt in her voice, her own eyes shining. "In a year from now, you'll be meeting me here with a baby in tow."
If I had her job, that would be one of the best moments; the moment when the adoptive parents suddenly grasp that this is real, it will happen. I bet you can see an entire world open up in their eyes.
On the drive home, I sat quietly. It felt like I was throwing open the windows and doors to an entire wing of myself that I had shut down.
My dreams are slowly uncurling like ferns from a bed of fallen leaves. I want to sew things; I want to learn to make a quilt. I want to buy a crap ton of stuff.
My husband appears mouth-wateringly attractive to me. I heard that happened, and I didn't understand it until just lately. The thought of him being the father of our family makes me want to go and wind myself right up into his arms and nestle down.
It wasn't two blue lines that caused my heart to expand in one breath, and it won't be nine months of pregnancy that leads me to my child.
There are still so many gates to pass through on this journey, and very probably some heartbreaking dead ends. There will be long periods of waiting, and anxious nights.
Next year, this day may come and go without any baby to hold, but even so, I understand now that I will be a mother.
Eventually, sleep deprived and dizzy, I will meet in that same store with my baby snuggled up in a carrier, bulging diaper bag in tow.
It is such a good feeling.
