i decided, at the ripe old age of four, that i would never have sons. it was daughters for me: a posse of them, like the pack of dolls who inhabited my room and imagination. what was there of boys, those queer, foreign creatures of snips and snails, to desire?

so i grew up dreaming not of a prince, or a fairytale wedding, but of a daughter. at least one girl…for whom i would weave the long threads of my heritage, my maternal lineage in families whose men mostly seemed to have died early or buggered off, into a meaningful inevitability, a quilt of strength and love and perseverance. a daughter, child of my heart. for as long as i can remember, she has been there.

cue the gods, snickering. oh you, heh heh...i imagine them, teeth bared with glee, breaking my naive wishes, my most secret longing, against sharp rocks. they have no malice, particularly. but neither do they hear what gets cried into pillows, poured into journals. my heart’s desire is the squeakings of mice, to them.

we talk, these days, about maybe another, maybe a sibling for O to get to grow up with, and my heart always leaps to my mouth. last chance for a girl.

i do not want to think of it that way. i do not even believe it will happen, any longer…this girl child i was once so convinced i was meant to have. the odds of a girl after two boys are only, like, 4 in 10…i need to conserve what luck i may be granted for bigger things, a living baby. and every child is a surprise, in who he or she turns out to be…that’s true, isn’t it? there is a huge, equivocal, open part of me that would love to see the face of my third son, and raise brothers, and unpack all those little striped boy newborn outfits again, for little Leo or Hugo or Augustus or whoever he might be. i would. i really would. and he would become a child of my heart, as Oscar has, as Finn did, in that first moment where i held him and realized that gender was such a tiny, silly thing, compared to breathing. in that hour and all the brutal months after, i would not have traded him, not for a million girls. not once since O’s birth have i held him and wished him other than he is…except maybe during the colic.  but that wasn’t him i wished to change, only how he we felt.

and yet…and yet. the same heart that would rejoice in a new son would also grieve forever my girl, that lost daughter i’ve carried within me for more than thirty years. and the prospect of having to turn my back, for good, on that little dark-haired girl, makes me hesitate, stop in the gate. i have already done so much grieving that more terrifies me, even for a construct, a wish.

then a few weeks ago, Slouching Mom wrote a post that took me out at the knees, about the little girl who flits in and out of her own dreams, and waits for her on the other side of a door, location still unknown. she said, “Perhaps it is only when I am close to death, when I curl my tired hands into my boys’ warm and vital palms, that the directions I must follow to find her will open up to me in the way of a road map, bulky and awkward but finally reassuringly detailed. Maybe she is my next life’s work.”

something in that comforts me, heartens me, gives me the courage to leap in and try again, throw the dice. my next life, in the moments i believe in it, is looking busy.

for saying what i can never quite find the words for, so poignantly and honestly, i send Slouchy my heart’s thanks…and a Perfect Post.

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and my gracious little Grinch heart also sends a thank you to No Mother Earth and Mad Hatter, who both nominated this post this month. i blush. that means a lot. that post meant a lot, to me.

the rest of the fine collection of Perfect Posts for September can be found at Suburban Turmoil and at Petroville. go. revel in the bounty.