Layla

Dear Layla,

I did not know it, but on the morning I told your father goodbye, when I felt so utterly alone, you were with me. For eight long months, you were the hope that sustained me, as I carried you. Through the nights, always the hardest, it was your tiny feet, and your little bitty hands, which did not feel so small buried in my bladder or pushed into my lungs, that kept me going. You were the last physical reminder I had of your father, when all else was taken from me.

You still are.

But now, it is bits and pieces of his face that I see when I look at you, tiny reminders that our life is still together, even if we are apart. I can no longer feel you kicking, but I can pick you up, sing songs to you, kiss those fat little cheeks, and listen to you breathe. Watching you with your father has been the greatest gift, the most unexpected blessing, I have ever had. Those moments, and the few that we have left, will sustain me, through the last few months apart.

You are so little, so very tiny, and I have no idea if you got the things I wished for you. His heart, his courage, his strength. Only that you have his ears, and that your hair is already dark like his. But you are his child, there is no doubt of that every time I look at you, a living, breathing symbol of the love we have. And a reminder that the toils of war, the long distances, the separations, mean nothing, in the face of love.

Daddy loves you more now, I'm sure, since the first moment I laid you in his arms, than he did when you were but a thought, a tiny promise. It is his love that drives him, that pushes him to keep us safe, and his love that will bring him back.

~Mommy