yes is a world.

The truth is that I wrote the first letter to you when I was young, and full of hope, and everything was big in the world. I was small.

Maybe eleven years old. Your Nana had given me a diary, it was dark green with a lock and key. It had "diary" written across it in cursive gold letters. It was the kind you will probably know nothing about. Made with cardboard and paper. The kind you lock up, because you don't want anyone to read it, comment on it, share it, or like it. I will give you one when you are eleven, and you will probably blog about it.

I didn't understand a lot about life then. I asked my friend Keri what she wrote about in her diary and she told me she wrote about boys, and that I should write about the boys I thought were cute.

But here is a terrible secret about your mom. I didn't like boys. At least, not until I was much older. I was what they call a late bloomer. Easily embarrassed any time the topic of boys came up. Only, not for the reason most girls my age were embarrassed, but because I thought there must be something wrong with me.Your friends will tell you that you should like boys. In fact, it will seem sometimes that everything in the universe is telling you that having a boyfriend makes you some sort of special. Even now, I have friends with little baby boys who talk about baby you being their baby girlfriend.

And that is okay. For some reason, grown-ups think it's cute when babies do grown-up things. (We are always trying to find ourselves in you. (you have your daddy's eyes, and you have legs like your mom...)) But this is what I will tell you. It is okay, also, if you do not like boys when you are eleven.(And I think I speak for your daddy, when I say it is okay if you do not like boys when you are thirty either). I will never ask you to grow up faster than you are ready to. The world is big, and there will be a lot of places to see, and things you will want to do. I promise to help grow a desire for those things in you as securely as the want to share them with someone special.

I didn't write about boys. I wrote about being outside, about the books I read, and about my teachers, and my family, and about your Uncle Jon, and about the girl friends I had and how they were changing around me. I wrote about what I thought my life would be like. And that included you.

One day, playing with my friend Brittany, out of things to do, I sheepishly suggested we play house. And she laughed. She laughed soundly and confidently. Like she knew exactly who she was, and who she was, was entirely too old to play with dolls. I laughed too, awkwardly and too loud, because I didn't know why who I was still wanted to play with dolls, and why it seemed to be the funniest thing in the world. We pretended to be high school kids instead. We had pretend cars, and pretend dates, and wore real pink lipstick. 

When I got home, I thought a lot about myself. And I thought a lot about you. I wrote you a letter. In my green diary, and I locked it up and hid the key because I didn't want anyone to see it. I told you about how much I was going to love you. I told you about the house we were going to live in, and what kind of toys I was going to buy for you. I told you about Brittany, and Keri. 

I know that maybe, I was writing to myself. That I was putting away childish things I wasn't really ready to abandon yet. I was giving them to you instead. 

The day I found out you were coming was a very important day for me. I felt so many things. You were a big surprise. A wonderful, and scary surprise. I felt a lot like I did the day I wrote your first letter. I was full of hope, and very confused.

See, when I decided I wasn't a child anymore, I filled my life with a new type of childishness. I was wasteful, and reckless. I did what I thought was fun. I loved many useless things, and swirled around creative energy into big sloppy messes. Although, I didn't see it that way then. 

Everything in this world, was about me. Sometimes, it was about your dad too, but mostly, it was about what I wanted, and how things made me feel. 

When I knew you were coming, I knew that had to change. I quit smoking cigarettes the day I found out about you. I used to smoke. Smoking is a liar. It is something that makes you feel alive and kills you inside. You need to know that. The worst things in life manipulate you. They pretend to be yours, and take control of you instead.

You coming gave me life in so many ways. 

When I found out about you, The world kept growing and shrinking in front of me. Like a pair of new lungs. It made me dizzy. It made my stomach hurt. It was like a roller coaster. It made want to throw my arms in the air and yell in excitement.

You were coming! You were mine!

I was yours. 

And with that comes great responsibility I take very seriously.
When your daddy and I were married, he vowed this to me;

"...you’ve made me consider predestination and have faith in fate and faithfulness

in all its earthy commitment .(I will never leave).

There’s no philosophy to you and me,

Because love needs no introduction;

No treatise to explain its existence,

only consistency; only yeses that mean yes after we’ve lived through no’s that only meant not yet.

If God lives outside of space and time, then it would seem we have always been each others,

Always been able to trust in the surety of providence because it could have been no other way,

Unless perhaps we chose it to be;

But we didn’t, we chose each other...

...I’ll give you children if you want them,

we will raise eternal persons made in the same Image we were made in;
 

Ill give them all that has been given to me,

not neglecting to pass on the Grace that helped me get to you."

These are the best words anyone on this earth has ever given me.
When I told your daddy about you. I wrote down part of our favorite poem. We love poetry. It said; 

 yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

And that is what you coming is. It is a yes, you are ours. It is a yes, we will always love you. It is a yes, we are on your side, and it is a yes, that the world is wide open and skilfully curled.

I give you these words. They are the first of many. This is not the first letter I've written you, but it is the first letter in many I will write in getting to know who you are. And in being known by you.

We chose to name you Autumn, because we love the fall. It smells like home, and it feels like hope. It is what life is, a beginning and ending and beginning again always.

We love you.
I love you.

-I am your mom.