The Letter...
How can something haunt you that you've never touched or seen?
Only heard about through the eyes of my glaring father and the hissing of his words, "it's on the dresser," as he keenly looks around and walks away. I can hardly breath from his disdain that filled the air in this room on this bittersweet day.
What would this letter say from a world apart...from a boy who became a man so very fast? In a foreign land fighting a war for his country...and his baby born only hours ago...Yet when he left we were fighting a war all our own...to stay together...to keep this baby...no matter what the odds...
The news came yesterday of the road side bomb...injuries to his head and back...the disk shattered...As I labored for our baby I took nothing for pain...there was not any medicine to ease the heartache... the void of him not beside me, could not tell him of his son, or the love I held in my heart strong.... enough for us both until his return...where he belonged.
The baby sleeping quietly named after his dad. Would his dad remember me or that he had a son? Just how much damage had the road side bomb done? My father in his spite against our love and our child, had left the letter to make me wonder what it might say...perhaps he might be coming home soon, or missed these days before his baby was born, or perhaps the words "I love you, let's get married soon." So many unknowns...so much harder than any pregnancy or labor. His letters had been sweet and very kind. I thought he loved me...yet what if all these harsh words my father kept using to describe our union were true? Yet deep within the crevices of my heart, not my father's words were heard, but the love of this man I knew.
The letter on the dresser at home perhaps would give me his answers for us before this road side bomb. I would stand with him...the baby and me...if that is what the letter said he wanted for us...If my father was right, I would burn that letter and move with my child... My baby would not be raised around anger and bile. I could picture my dresser with coats of white paint...it seemed cool when I was eight...My pictures and high school awards were all there...the letter must be lying there seemingly so small...yet it held the future for my baby and me. Oh how cruel for my father not to bring that precious letter to me!
It's not like I wasn't use to waiting...I had become a pro in the last nine months...the father of my baby deployed...praying for him and my baby every day...living in a house I wasn't welcomed in anymore...today the waiting was the hardest of all...no words from his parents...the letter from him I could not yet see yet...
In this moment of sheer panic the door opens wide, the nurse rolls my baby in to see his mom. She gently hands this perfect human being to me and he begins to nurse...and for a moment...I smile...The door opens wide again, I think it's the nurse... There stands two Moms. I look at their faces and then my Mom's hands...holding a letter I know is mine...In this very moment that seems to be playing in slow motion...I'm thrilled my son has his Dad's name and I reach out for the letter as a Mother's tears fall upon it...
