My dear beloved Amaree,

Today, I have to apologize.

Four years ago, when you were conceived, all the odds were against your arriving here – I was 41, your dad and I used birth control, my thyroid levels were off, and we had no conscious plan to become parents. But when we found out that you had been planted in my body, and this just two days before our long-planned trip to visit the villages of our Eastern European ancestors, I knew: there are forces much larger than your father and I here at work. We are in the realm of great mystery. We were not in charge.

I’ve wanted to come to the desert since moving to Florida. All the lushness and green-ness and lots-of-ness made me crave the emptiness of the desert, the wide open vast expanses that could hold dreams and reflections and what-if’s as wide as my heart dared to move.

This is the picture that was taken about 15 minutes before the wail.

The wail that reverberated throughout the preschool, across the playground, and across the street to the car where me, my partner, and our nanny sat with squinted eyes, spying through the fence at the sight of our beloved being held by a man in a colorful shirt she had never seen much less than held by. About 5 minutes later we heard notes from a song, and realized the stranger was singing to her. Just enough solace to let ourselves drive away.

Leif is gone for a few days, and so I decided to head to the beach with Ami. Due to some overly-idealistic planning on my part, we arrived at the hotel late at night and crawled into bed at 1am. Exhausted from the long drive, I fell asleep confident (or trying to be) that she would sleep her regular ten hours.

You are three, Amaree.

Three years you emerged from my split open belly with a cry, announcing mayhem, heralding a new universe. The doctor held your little body up over the blue curtain, and I cried, too, instantly in love, knowing that nothing would ever be the same.

Ami is asleep on me. I write this with one thumb. The last time she fell asleep on me breastfeeding, leaving me trapped on the couch, unable to pee or eat for hours, with just a thumb to communicate with the outside world, she was an infant. My world then had been turned upside down, plunged into the sudden absence of all control and autonomy, no roadmap or glimmer of familiarity in sight.

2 1/2 years into this wild journey called parenting, and I still feel the need to celebrate the miracle of getting to go to the store - or do anything - by myself.

Two.

Too big, this love, to not break my heart.

Two small legs, twiddling fast fast fast through the grass through the leaves through space like the wind itself.

Two years of breast-feeding, crying, adrenalin rising, successful diaper changing, exhaling, feeding, scrambling to the next and the next and the next, falling exhausted into bed, teeth barely brushed, and rinse, wash, repeat.