Oh, my darling bump, my bundle, my traveller inside. This would be a love letter, if you were alive. But it's just an almost love letter, since you're just an almost child.
I've got important things to tell you, and I know that you can hear me. I know because you always simmer down when I switch on the radio; you give your old mum a few minutes peace, and let her sit down with a cup of tea and a quiescent belly. You kick your little feet out when the football starts and head me in the diaphragm, because you know I'm going to get up and turn off the telly. You share my tastes – calm for the classics, bouncing with the Beatles, jiving with Justin. You hear my voice and leap with life; you know me, even if you can't yet understand my words.
I'm talking to you now, my little flickering goldfish, captive audience in an aquarium of my own vitality. I'm urgent in this my conversation because no-one can ever truly tell the future, and heaven knows that we might never meet face to face, lips to blue-veined breast.
Oh, child of mine, my little one, I'll never press you beyond your limitations. I have no desires of a brilliant future for you – I'll not be disappointed if you don't become President, a writer, a surgeon or a scholar. I just want you to be happy, to be who, what and all you are. Be true to yourself, always do your utmost and wear your joy openly on your face, and you will draw happiness to you, as your father once did.
Your father … oh don't blame me, and do forgive him too. He's not around to see you any more. He has a younger woman now, one he loves more dearly. He left me when he thought me old, dry and menopausal; he didn't know those changes came not from age but from new life within. When he understood, he was disgusted, ashamed of you, of me, of that proof of active, aging passion. He'd said we never did it any more, you see. And we didn't, very often.
Half a century of life I've seen. I've wisdom to impart to you, mistakes to avoid, opportunities to seek, things to say, to learn, to do. You must have time to listen; I must have time to tell. I've seen so many changes in my span. The hospitals now are wonderful, they save so many lives that long before would simply be discarded.
Don't condemn me, my darling, for growing old. Don't envy your friends for fashionable mums and football playing dads. Take what I can give you, and value it; it's all I have. I hope I can keep up with you, an active running child, as I grow frail. I'm terrified of leaving you alone, but with my age comes danger, and if I go, I know that your father will do his part and that his new wife will love you as well as she can.
If I should die before, remember me: remember this warm womb, those walls of red, my succouring of you, plugged deep into my highly-pressured blood, my circulation. Hear and retain the rhythm of my voice, my heart. As I grow grey, thin and pale, you swell, nurtured, caressed by my inner self in every way.
Oh lord, why did you never give me this before, when I was young? Chords within vibrate in sympathy; fires blaze where they were never lit before. The anticipation is every Christmas come at once; the excitement is unbearable. My son, my love, come soon.
My darling, forgive me most of all. The doctors, you see, when they saw my age, they tested you. They drew out fluid and examined it. They shook their knowledgeable heads and said how lucky I was to know. They said you'd always be an almost-child, an imperfect child, an always-child. They gave me the choice, and I chose life, without ever asking you. The doctors said you mustn't live; they said I was selfish, thinking only of myself. But no, my son, I thought of you, just you and couldn't tear you out and flush you away. Your soul shone bright within me, even then.
I pray you'll be a happy child. Your sort often are, they say. I pray that I will be your living mum for as long as I am spared, and feed and wipe your little milky mouth. I pray that you'll forgive us both, and make yourself a life. Never say you wish I'd never spared you; never wish for death over imperfection. Life is never promised to us to be bliss.
And that's my almost love letter, for my almost-always-child.