Claire Bidwell Smith

Dear Vera,

You are 21 months now, almost 2 years old!

You are definitely a little girl all of a sudden, running and talking and giggling and wearing sunglasses. I can hardly believe it. Funnily enough though, your favorite game is to pretend you are a little baby. Your dad or I cradle and rock you, and you scrunch up your face and do this little fake-cry that makes me laugh. Sometimes your dad and I pretend to steal you away from each other. "That's my baby," we say, and you squeal with delight as we snatch you back and forth.

This time last year you were just learning to walk, and now all you do is talk. You are saying 4 and 5 word sentences now. "I need a towel, Grandma." or "I want ice cream." I love, love, love your little voice and can never get enough of hearing the thoughts in your head.

I saw a mother and daughter in the airport yesterday and thought of you and me. The daughter must have been in her early twenties, and I loved how much they looked alike. Not just their tall, lean bodies, but their style and countenance. Two women, born of each other.

It's so strange to think that you will have little memory of this time in your life, in our little family's life. Your dad and I are in the midst of some of the most exciting things that have ever happened to us. And on the cusp of age 33, I feel more me than I've ever felt. I wonder how much of that has to do with you. Maybe I was never quite me until you.

I finished my book and handed it in to my editor last week. I still can't believe that this is really happening. I'm so filled up right now, so excited about all that is to come. I'm brimming with ideas and plans and projects. More books and workshops and travel and on and on. But it's odd to be going through such a fruitful career time in the middle of becoming a mother.

I keep trying to figure out how I'm going to do it all. How I'm going to give you a sibling. How I'm going to be a great mom. How I'm going to write more books and develop a private practice and start up workshops, all at the same time. It sounds huge and kind of impossible, but also completely inevitable. I must do it all. I can and will do it all. Somehow.

I have these moments where I catch myself wondering why it's all happening at once — career highs and creating a family. I wonder why I couldn't have been doing just one or the other. But then I think back to the summer before you were born, how still and slow life seemed. How uninspiring. My future was flat, a thin, bland road that stretched on endlessly through some empty state in the middle of the country.

Now the future seems thick and ripe, bursting with potential and curves of possibility. It's all happening at once because one inspires the other. You fill me up, kiddo. You make life worth it. You make every minute important, the future inevitable.

All my love,

Mama