my dearest Ioanna,

I’ve lied to you. I’ve said over the years that I dreamt you. That I dreamt of who you would be, the joy you would bring, the child that you were, and the young woman you are becoming.

This was a lie. I envisioned you.

it was first through writing. I was playing with this idea, a man and woman on the shore, having spent the night, with their children already playing at dawn, and the resignation of time, of the world, of what does a parent own of their children, of what they inevitably have to sacrifice to the world. The daughter was older than the son, l did not know it was you or mikey, it was an idea I was working through writing, having just been married and what it would mean to raise a family.

a year later or so, I was on the deck, thinking about how Mommy was now pregnant. On the second floor, in Yiayia and Papou’s house. Cigarette in hand, I took a drag, staring off to a horizon made jagged by chimneys and powerlines. I exhaled, and I saw it. I saw you. Not as you are now of course, but at 2, maybe 3. You were the girl on the shore, but you were now in a house, our home, you were the girl I was writing about. I came back in and told Mommy you were going to be a girl. She of course said, I just want the baby to be healthy.

But there you were, I was watching you play in the den and you decided to stumble out into the living room, climbing the scant stairs between here and there. There you were, that vision I had on the deck, the girl looking for shells on the shore. And of course, of course, when we do go to the beach, you are always looking for shells, for beauty in refuse, for that fragile thing that has survived the brutality of the tide.

We speak so often in this house how magical the love Mommy and I share has been, an alchemy of circumstance and time and chaos. But my life has been rife with magic, I had a vision, I tapped into something honest and gentle and extraordinary and oh so precious.

And there you are. Here you are.

Love, always,
me