The Time That I've Had to Love You

Dear Ellie,

You were born only a week ago, but I’ve had a lot longer than that to love you.  Fifteen years, to be exact.  I always wanted a daughter, and when I met your mother back in high school and we decided that our future would have children, I immediately knew that I’d have a daughter like her.  That is when I came to know you.  I didn’t even have to try.  You were like a little black-haired pixie, flitting through my imagination whether I willed it or not, appearing unexpectedly in my thoughts and idle day dreams to keep me company.  I’d be reading a book or taking a walk and often I’d find myself muttering something to you (that’s how ripe you were in my imagination!) and then I’d smile and look around and hope that no one had seen me talking to myself like a lunatic.  You seemed real to me then because I knew you would be real one day.

But that day became further and further away.  As the years went by and our fertility problems worsened, I didn’t imagine you any less often, but doing so began to hurt.  Each time we suffered a set back, a strange kind of grief began to infect my life.  I had come to know you so well, to love you so much, that facing the reality that you may never be real was like seeing you slowly die.  As if knowing you would never be real would extinguish you from my mind.      

Now you are here.  It feels like we have years between us already.  I hope we have many more.