Shall I play for you?

Dear Little One: Letters to My Kid (#2)

Dear reader,

Wishing you care and comfort in these holy days. If you find a quiet moment in the hubbub, consider joining us in the Dear Me ritual here - write a brief letter to yourself about what 2024 was for you and what you’re bringing into 2025. Send it to me (andrewforsthoefel@gmail.com). I’ll take excerpts from your letters and edit them together to make one letter that I’ll then post it here. Instructions. I’m bumping the submission deadline to December 29, thanks to all who can share!

Meantime, I wrote a letter to our baby, still growing in Tana’s womb. The Nativity story is really hitting different this Christmas season. I’m feeling how every child is a holy child, every baby, the newborn king or queen. Each of us, the great light. One light, in this dark sky full of stars.

Warmth and joy to you,

Andrew

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Dear baby,

Well, it’s almost Christmas and you have another two months or so left in your mom’s womb. I feel a great hush beginning to fall upon me. Within the noise of my days, there’s an encroaching silence, deepening, growing in its gravitational pull. It’s a downward movement in my heart, my guts. An earthward movement of my attention. Maybe I’m feeling what your soul is feeling as you are drawn into your body, into this life you’re coming here to live.

Business as usual continues, but nothing is usual anymore, now that you are landing. It’s so strange: everything is changed, but it all looks pretty much the same, except for your mother’s belly. This world of appearances hasn’t yet accounted for you. It will, as you grow into it. And I will, as you grow into me.

I feel like one of the Three Kings who somehow senses the arrival of baby Jesus on Earth, who understands that everything else now has to be put on hold in order to make the pilgrimage to meet this great one, pay tribute. I am making my pilgrimage to you, following the north star of your growing light, as you make your pilgrimage to us through the dark night of your mother’s womb, and then, soon, through her sacred sacrum, into our world. I’ll be waiting at the gates to greet you, my daughter, my son. I’ll bring everything I have, everything I am, all of my frankincense, gold, and myrrh, so to honor you, pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.

Little baby,

I am a poor boy, too,

I have no gift to bring.

Shall I play for you?

I’ll play my drum for you,

I’ll play my best for you.

Will you smile at me?

Me and my drum?

Me and my drum?

Jesus Christ, kid. Here you come. I’m having a hard time concentrating at work now, or caring much about anything other than you, than this, what we are approaching here together. The rest just feels like, meh.

You are the gospel, the good news. You are the divine son of Gaia, or sacred daughter of the Goddess, holy child of God. What are you coming Earthside to teach us? What miracles are you here to work? What sermons will you deliver? What wounds will you suffer and heal? What deaths will you die and how will you rise again, and again, and again? I’ll be listening, watching, following. Your first disciple. Your dad.

Your holy mother just came in to say good morning, parted her fuzzy pink bathrobe and put my cold hands on her warm belly. Sure enough, there you were. Good morning! Every time I feel you lurch and kick and roll inside her, I am jolted with a wonder that widens my eyes, opens my mouth, lifts my eyebrows. It’s never not weird, never not miraculous.

I asked your mom, “Does it ever get old, or like, normal? Do you stop noticing it?” Because, she feels your every movement, and you are moving a lot.

No, she said. It’s amazing. Every time. All the time.

Yes you are, and will always be, my king of kings, goddess of my goddess, my baby, my teacher, my kid forever and ever amen.

Love,

Dad