Laying in a hospital at 2am, exhausted from labor and visiting friends and family; I'm looking at you with a love I didn't know I had room for in my heart. Watching your mother feeding you, it takes everything I have to fight back the sleepiness that has plagued me for days. She looks at me and says "it's ok to go to sleep now." to which I simply reply "I can't."
I could watch you sleep forever. Everything you do fascinates me. The kind of love I have for you trumps everything I can recall that I've enjoyed in my short life. As I lay there watching you sleep, this irrational fear takes over and I sincerely reply to your mother "I can't go to sleep. I'm too afraid that I'll wake up and he won't be here." You are a dream to me, son. In every sense of the statement, you are too good to be true.
I watched you come into the world. Looking at the faces of everyone there to support us was all I could do at times to grasp how close you were to finally being ours; and when you arrived, I couldn't look at you. I'm not sure if it's because I felt like I didn't deserve you. I wasn't sure of anything in that moment, I just knew I couldn't see you yet. I needed to get right with myself, because this love that consumed me now, is the complete opposite of what I felt when I first discovered you were going to be mine.
I'm saddened and embarrassed to admit that at one point in time, I had no interest in a little kherington being in my life. I wasn't in a good place in my life, or at least a good enough place, I thought. The idea that everything had to be perfect and in order to do something like having a child, is silly and unrealistic in retrospect. Now that I see you, now that I see myself in you, I know things will be ok...but they will be ok BECAUSE you are here. You are my motivation. From this day on, I live for you.
Thank you for being mine.
I won't let you down.
Love,
Daddy
