When I was around the age of 13, I wrote a letter to my future daughter in my diary, and we’ve been in conversation ever since.
In the letter, I vowed I would never say or do the things I was upset with my Mom for that day. I still remember what it said, but I don’t have it anymore because when I found it again around the age of 18, I ripped it out and up in a quiet moment of embarrassment.
Today, I know that my Mom had her own childhood and she was doing the best she could with what she had and what she knew. And, I also know that 13-ish and 18-ish-year-old me’s feelings were valid.
Something my Mom doesn’t know is that she inspired me to write and keep a diary in the first place when I found something she wrote tucked away in a bookshelf in the loft of our house. I was reading at the sixth-grade level when I was in first grade and I loved Nancy Drew; I wanted to be Nancy Drew; I thought I was Nancy Drew - so I was always “sleuthing” around.
I still remember what the folded-up notebook paper said in the perfect penmanship of the teacher that she is, despite being forced to use her right hand instead of her left when she was only a student.
So, God tried again and made me left-handed.
It was an honest account and eloquent collection of thoughts from the trenches of early motherhood when I was two and my sister was a baby (two more of us were still yet to come). After I read it, I put it back on the bookshelf exactly how I found it (just like Nancy would have). Years later I went back to the bookshelf to find it, but it wasn’t there. I’ve always wondered if she had found it again and maybe she ripped it up in her own quiet moment of embarrassment.
When my husband and I went back to my parent’s house for our first Thanksgiving as a married couple, we stayed in the loft. I’ve shared a room with my sister her whole life, so my parents put a mattress up there to make room for their now adult children.
Out of the trenches and into the support line in a blink of an eye.
My Mom always makes a big fuss when any of us come home, so much so that my sister has started to call a stay at home a stay at “Hotel du Mom,” where we’re frequently asked questions like: Were your pillows okay? Did you have enough blankets? Do you need a bar of Dove soap? - Here’s one anyway, and a toothbrush and toothpaste in case you forgot yours.
For that first stay in the loft, she placed a framed picture of me and her when I was just a year old. And then I found a tiny photo album she made for my Dad’s parents with pictures from the day I was born - the first picture of her, one hand cradling the bottom of her basketball of a belly, the other resting on top, and me still inside.
Looking at old pictures always makes me sad in a nostalgic kind of way - the way you wish you could slow down time or pause it just for a moment, just to have a little more. I will never stop trying to beg, borrow, and steal for more time.
Two Octobers ago, I reached out to our wedding photographer, turned dear friend who has documented the life my husband and I have been building together ever since. We had been flirting with growing our family for the past few months - not trying, but not preventing either. But before we went any further, there was something I wanted to do; something I needed to do - for me and for 80-year-old me.
Because motherhood is such a physical experience. Being a woman is such a physical experience.
I told her I have this yearning to document my body as it is before stepping into this new chapter - not to be confused with a boudoir shoot or photos geared towards the male gaze, but rather an ode to this body and the 29 years it had carried me through this world.
I wanted to capture a snapshot of my body upon its arrival on the doorstep of motherhood, prepared to step over the threshold and transform. No makeup or fussing with my hair. No special preparations. No manicure or pedicure. No concealing of scars and stretch marks. No Photoshop when it’s all said and done.
It was the most empowering experience of my life to date.
It was a claiming of my sensuality and sexuality that the church taught me to have shame around since I was old enough to understand.
It was a reclamation of what is mine after someone tried to take it from me without permission; after I woke up to my best friend’s boyfriend on top of me one morning in my college dorm room; after I gave it away to a boyfriend who wasn’t worth a moment of my time; after the countless times my body has been treated like public property - there’s no such thing as an innocent or accidental “ass-grab.”
A homecoming to the only place that has ever truly been mine to call home, even when it was hard to be in it.
A celebration of the blemishes that remind me I am a spiritual being having a human experience - that remind me I was there, I am here; the stretch marks that joined me on my journey to womanhood; the tan lines, busted toenail, and new scar from mountain biking that served as fresh evidence of the 5th best summer of my life; my small chest and mile-long legs that my middle school science teacher deemed a “distraction” from the education of the boys I shared the classroom with, motioning me to pull up the top of my shirt or stopping me for a “fingertip check” when I would pass her; the curve of my belly and my hips that were circled as “problem areas” by the modeling agency that signed me when I was 15.
A few weeks ago, I stepped in front of her lens again. This time donning nothing but a 33-week bump.
Last February, my husband and I traveled back to China for Chinese New Year. It was a trip made especially poetic as our first trip back together since before the pandemic, taking place during the world’s largest annual human migration - the one time a year when everyone travels home to reunite with family.
Traveling home and reuniting with family was our only wish for five long years.
I’ll never forget the way it felt when our plane landed in Shanghai. This must be what it feels like to return home after having been to war, I thought.
We had survived
everything.
Above all, losing my father-in-law from an ocean away and without a proper goodbye.
So, upon our arrival, I had a new wish: To grow our family. And, on our second day, I wrote it down and hung my wish beside the many wishes of others on a wishing tree.
During Chinese New Year, there are wishing trees all around China - big and small, inside and outside. Their branches so vulnerably holding the hopes of hundreds and hundreds of thousands for all to see. It is one of the most beautiful expressions of humanity I have ever witnessed - that despite it all, there is hope; here is my hope, written down for all the world to see.
This February, we will welcome our first child.
I found out I was pregnant in my childhood bathroom. Its narrow shape, green walls, vintage laminate flooring, and a large mirror that have held me and watched me grow through every age and every stage since the day I came home from the hospital with my parents.
There for my first bath. Where I stood by the bathtub before pre-school and told my Mom that I was either going to marry my Dad or Isaac (the son of a pastor and my first friend besides my sister, who this highly sensitive soul clung to for dear life in pre-school and kindergarten) before I knew what getting married was all about.
There for every ear infection and long night with the flu. There with its big heat lamp to act as the sun when my Dad used our bath toys to show us how the sun and the moon dance and the planets orbit in the sky. Where when my Mom would wet my curly hair down and gel it back into a ballet bun, much to its rebellion, for every dress rehearsal and ballet recital ages three through 11.
There when middle school hit and so did my black eyeliner phase (did you ever line the inside of your lower lids too?). There with a stereo and a stage when I thought I was going to be a pop star. Where I practiced all my choir music. Where mine and my sister’s friends gathered before every homecoming and prom to do each other’s hair and make-up. There when the homecoming date ditched me and the prom date didn’t work out (looking back, thank God and thanks to my Mom).
There when I experienced my first heartbreak. There with a hot shower after every practice, game, and meet. There when I needed a place where my tears could run with the water as I sat soaked in deep grief (not a day goes by that I don’t miss Daniel, Uncle Mike, or my Grampa).
There to catch my joy and every happy dance.
Where those two blue lines crossed on a Tuesday night in June.
The weekend before, I picked up my husband from the airport to join my family at my youngest sister’s college graduation. I had been in Oregon for the past few weeks, home at “Hotel du Mom” to celebrate her 60th birthday. He was only able to stay for the weekend. So, instead of driving all the way back to the coast after graduation, we decided we would get a hotel in Portland for the night before he flew out on Father’s Day.
We stayed at the Ritz Carlton.
One of my husband’s many talents is that he’s savvy with his credit card points, which makes a small-town girl like me no stranger to luxury hotels like the Four Seasons and the Ritz. But because I’m a small-town girl, I don’t need shiny things to be happy. When he first suggested that we stay at the Ritz, I told him we should save it for a special occasion. But one of my husband’s best attributes is his spontaneity and the way he lives like tomorrow isn’t promised.
Because it’s not.
When we checked in, the hotel receptionist asked if we were celebrating anything. “Hmmm…” we both said as we looked at one another, smiling. And then my husband said, “We’re just celebrating.” What, we didn’t know, but we were celebrating and it became an inside joke with the hotel receptionist the rest of the evening as we came and went.
Little did we both know, I was four weeks along.
The next morning, we woke up and ordered room service - as one does at the Ritz. Over toast, eggs, coffee, and opening miniature glass bottles of Heinz, I wished my husband a Happy Father’s Day. It just came out of my mouth unbeknownst to me. But it wasn’t unusual, because he’s always wished me a Happy Mother’s Day every Mother’s Day since we married. Just like you know when you know who you want to spend the rest of your life with, you know who you want to grow a family with.
-If a family is something you want to grow.
The rest of the morning, we walked around Portland. I took a picture in front of the infamous Powell’s Books, hanging a wish on a metaphorical wishing tree that someday my book will be sitting in its windows.
My husband boarded his plane, and I drove back to the coast. Monday passed and then came Tuesday. As I was driving home after visiting with my grandparents and having dinner with my sister, I made an unplanned stop at Walgreens.
I had a sneaking suspicion.
On my way home, I took a last-minute turn and drove the familiar road to the beach just before sunset to look out at the ocean. I think I went there to take in my last and final moment in the liminal space between the unknown and the known because, in my heart, I knew.
They tell you a mother always knows before she knows.
It was my last night at my parent’s house, and there I was with a positive test in my hands, shaking, tears welling in my eyes; their kid, taking in the realization that I was going to have a kid of my own.
That night, I went to sleep in my childhood bedroom with the same feeling I used to get going to bed on Christmas Eve when I was growing up. The next morning, I woke up before the sun in a fit of excitement like I did when I was a kid on Christmas morning. The house was quiet and I rushed to the bathroom, this time with a digital test to be sure it wasn’t all just a dream.
Within moments, the word “Pregnant” appeared on the tiny screen.
That afternoon, I drove back to Portland with my sisters to board a flight of my own. Two of my sisters and I surprised our youngest sister with a trip to Los Angeles for her graduation. It was a plan we hatched when we were much younger - to go on a sister’s trip once the youngest of us graduates college. Los Angeles, because our youngest sister (and all the rest of us) are big Noah Kahan fans. Our youngest sister had tickets to see him the year before, but the concert was canceled and never rescheduled. She was heartbroken and so, as sisters naturally do, we sprung into action to make sure she got to see him come hell or high water and we scored tickets for a Hollywood Bowl concert.
It was our best-kept secret for nearly 10 months and when the day finally arrived, I was carrying a best-kept secret of my own.
We stayed at the most beautiful house in Altadena, which - to our heartbreak - likely doesn’t exist anymore after the fires. I would wake up each morning and check my newly downloaded pregnancy-tracking app under the sheets just to remind myself that it was real. We spent a day in Manhattan Beach, a little slice of LA that I’ve carved out as my own and come back to every time I’m in town; where I bought an extremely oversized sweatshirt on a whim, knowing that my belly would fill it soon enough. My youngest sister took pictures of me in my blue two-piece swimsuit on the beach, not knowing there were actually two of us in the frame and me not knowing if my body would ever look like that again.
We drove through Topanga Canyon all the way to Malibu. Spent the morning with a photographer at El Matador Beach, capturing our sisterhood for our own, our parents, and posterity’s sake - and those were the pictures I used to tell my sisters that they were going to be aunts. We danced and sang the night away at the Hollywood Bowl and I thought about how I would tell this baby that was their first concert. We went to the Silver Lake Farmer’s Market and the Griffith Observatory, where studying the constellations and wonders of the universe never gets old. But this time I took special note of the Pisces Constellation and the month of February, knowing I was carrying the wonders of the universe inside of me.
Pregnant or not, we all are if you think about it. Chalk-full of nothing but stardust when you get down to it.
The oldest of us dropped the youngest of us off at the airport and decided to visit the house that my Dad’s parents brought him home to before we flew out too. Sometimes you have to go back to the beginning when you’re on the precipice of a new one. The house is unrecognizable, concealed by the tallest hedges you’ve ever seen on the once quiet, now busy street that I’d visited so many times before. And even though I wasn’t there and far from being here, I can see my Dad, drenched in the Californian sun running down the back alley. Just a boy with thick black hair and olive skin, up to good mischief with his siblings. The way he’s stayed close to his childhood is the way I’ve stayed close to me - recalling memories so vibrantly you can almost see, hear, smell, and taste them.
Like me, he’s keenly aware of the passage of time. As I’ve embarked on the journey to becoming a mother, I’ve been watching as he prepares to lose his own. The way he looks back at me after he hugs her, and I know he’s wondering if it’s going to be his last.
So he hugs her again.
It’s in this dizzying display of the circle of life that I realized if all goes as it’s supposed to, someday I’m going to walk him home and this little being I’m growing inside of me is going to walk me home someday too.
I truly believe that birth and death are the same thing in opposite directions; that we start where we end and end where we start. And because of that, maybe there are no beginnings or endings - just trips into the next room. Which means that maybe those who have passed before us are with those that we’re yet to meet.
When my husband and I stood at my father-in-law’s grave one last time before we headed back to America, we told him the next time we visited we would have his grandchild with us. There’s nothing he wanted more than to be a 爷爷 (yéye). But I think when he went back to the stars, he was with this little one until it was time for them to come Earthside. How else can I explain my cravings for anything with peanuts (his absolute favorite snack), morning sickness at night on China Standard Time, or an insatiable hunger for Nanchang noodles?
And so, there is a crib set up in the bedroom across the house that I filled with the strength of over 1,000 workouts, and our home gym is now neatly laid out in our garage. Two weekends ago, three dear friends came over and made that happen. New packages arrive on our doorstep daily. Our loved ones have visited us from near and far and showered us with gifts, preparations, best wishes, and community like I’ve never experienced before.
Do you need one of these? I have an extra. I can help you with that. Anytime. Don’t hesitate to ask. Here is a loaf of freshly baked sourdough. I made you tomato soup and corn chowder. Let me know when you need food - because you will need food. I brought you sparkling waters. Let me lift that for you. Here are some compression socks. I will stop by after work.
My Mom has sent a box of bars of Dove soap (even though I have plenty to share) ahead of her boarding a plane for the first time in years for a stay at “Hotel du Meg” while she guides her first baby in welcoming her first baby. The truth is, no matter how old you get, you will always need your Mom.
That is the only thing I know for sure.
Our wedding photographer, turned dear friend is waiting for my signal to meet us at the hospital where she will capture the very beginning of this next chapter in our story and our child’s first breath. In many ways, she knows me like no one else does - always there, kindred in spirit, quietly observing and holding space for the most intimate and personal moments of my life in a way that only she can.
My clothes are bigger and with my hips, my heart has expanded in unmeasurable amounts for a person whose face (or sex) I don’t even know yet.
The planets are aligning in the night sky for a once-in-a-lifetime event.
My husband is going to be a father.
And I,
I am going to be a mother.
GORGEOUS. The writing. The moments. The details. The journey. YOU.
"I will never stop trying to beg, borrow, and steal for more time."
Really excellent read. New life is hope and hope is so beautiful. Wishing you well on your entry into motherhood.