One of These Days

Dear Mom and Dad

Write a letter to your parents from before your birth. Give them advice about how to raise you and give them a heads up about anything they might struggle with when you come into their lives.


Dear Mom & Dad,

This is going to be a little weird, considering I'm not born yet and I know how excited you are that I'm coming. Two years of trying, finding out the cause, and being successful at creating...me. You're going to be lucky, because I'm a pretty easy going kid. You'll get spoiled with me when number two comes along in a few years. Therefore, my letter to you will be pretty easy as well.

Mom, you'll understand me on a level that most won't, because we will share that shyness and that awkwardness. That will come later of course. As a little kid, I'll be a bit more outgoing. Let me reach for the stars with my imagination. It will be exploding. Even as a little kid, I will like to create stories. Picture ones at first. Dad, I hope you won't mind I'll be using a lot of your notepads, the ones without the lines for these stories. I'll probably annoy you to death with the stories, each one being wildly different than the last one, even though it's the same pictures.

Dad, answer all my questions. I'll be curious and want to know things. I'll be up your butt for the first decade of my life, almost. Be patient with me. I know sometimes it isn't one of your strengths, but I won't be a bother, I promise!

There's going to be a really tough stretch for you guys and I wish I could say life gets better for you even after. I wish I could tell you to get out of the arcade business earlier than you did and to stay away from certain people. Do the trailer park idea. I wish that was possible for me to do, because your life would be (I'd hope at least) a lot less depressing for you. The way life goes anyway, is you will lose everything. Including the house you helped blossom, your dream home. Dad will go into a severe depression, taking the blame for everything and questioning himself for probably the rest of his life. Mom, you will have two jobs, one more stressful than the other and both pay pretty poorly, but you'll still make sure the bills are paid and we will have Christmases. We won't have extras, but we will never go without and we will be happy. We will live in a shitty apartment for eight years before getting our own home. It isn't exactly what we want and there will be problems with it, but it will be ours.

There's a lot of other things. Your youngest will give you problems and push you both to your emotional and mental limits.

I tell you these things not because I will be difficult, but because you both will feel guilt and depression over those things and I want to tell you that I will be fine. Maybe put a little extra attention on the younger one, she will need it more than I will. I will learn a lot of things from it. I will miss our house. I'll wish for things I know I will never get and be jealous of people who have more than we do. But that's natural, right? And even though I'll have those feelings, I will never hold them against you. You guys will create a dingus daughter who will have struggles and challenges of her own that are mostly out of her control, but she will be strong and smart thanks to you.

Oh and before I forget, books. Just buy me a lot of books. Start early. I have an addiction that gets out of control.

I love you guys. I know I'm not here yet and it will be quite awhile before I will be able to really appreciate everything, but thank you for everything you give me. Not just materialistically, but well you know, the life lessons. Thanks for those. And the stories and memories. I'll cherish them more than you could probably ever imagine.

Always,
your future daughter that you will name Ashley Nicole

P.S. Mom, I hope you know that with that name I'll be the eighth Ashley in the nursery, so...yknow...if you want to maybe change it to something else I wouldn't entirely object.