July 2022

​The algorithm knows. And a company sent me formula and a bottle (I think because I pretended I was pregnant to enter an Instagram raffle, once). 

According to the letter, this would have been my due-date (if I had really been pregnant when I entered the raffle). What a strange thing to mourn. 

We want to raise you in Massachusetts: take you to the musicals in the park that fill our hearts with joy, the beaches with the softest sand and the calmest waters. To the museums and the ducklings in the City, whose names you will all know, from the books we will read. We want you to know the months of the years by the festivals that fill them. June is the strawberry festival, July is the blueberry festival, October is the pumpkin patch, December is for christmas tree farms and daddy making latkes. And more reasons to celebrate than we had ever imagined. That we will find together. 

It's automatic now: we see a baby and squeeze each other's hands. As if we're both saying it'll be us someday. Both wishing that today could  be the ​someday. 

Mom (Grandma Honey?)  swears this is good that we are waiting for you and everyone else is not our baby. But what are you waiting for?

July has been replete with hope, broken and rebuilt. With reassessing how we will survive the hardest parts; what we can give and what we must hold on to. An endless loop. A countdown. A promise. A prayer.