Dearest one,
There is something you should know about your mama (in the off chance it hasn't already occurred to you over the last two months): I am a procrastinator. I thought my incredible, awe-inspiring love for you would overcome any and all weaknesses in me, but alas, here we are -- only two months into this "open letter" writing business -- and already I am late.
But! But! I have an excuse. (And I always will.) I had started to write this long explanation-slash-apology letter about your name, but a conversation with your pediatrician changed my mind and I had to go about re-writing the entire thing. Actually, it wasn't even your pediatrician. He was a sub for the pediatrician I wanted you to see for your two month appointment.
He is an older gentleman with silver hair, probably in his 60s, with a kind face and wire rim glasses. I was pretty disappointed when they told me you'd be seeing him because Dr. Le-Jenkins was out for the day. Just last year, he was one of the handful of doctors who had just shrugged his shoulders when your older brother was going through all his tummy troubles as an infant. That shoulder shrug was still vivid in my memory, and I was prepared to be annoyed during your whole appointment, but instead he came bursting into the room with a huge smile, exclaiming, "Sadie Love! What a name! I just love that name!"
And he meant it. If it hadn't been for the way he had shrugged his shoulders during Carter's appointment, I would have thought he was just another one of those over-enthusiastic pediatricians who tries to butter up the anxious mothers -- but I know he's not. He's actually pretty dismissive of mothers as a whole. I've listened to him through the thin walls of the appointment rooms talk to other women, and I can hear his tired voice and imagine his shoulders shrugging as he listens to yet another mother ramble on about yet another infant who won't sleep more than two hours at a stretch.
But my, oh my. If he hadn't already loved your name, he would have loved you after the first five minutes of your appointment. There you were, smiling away in your pink diaper and wiggling all 12 pounds and seven ounces around on the table as he told me again how much he liked your name. And as you cooed and flirted, I realized you really are the perfect embodiment of a Sadie Love. So happy. So beautiful. But, but...
"Well, I actually worry about it a bit," I confessed to him.
"Why is that?"
"Well, I had always planned on naming her Sadie Love. It's a name that I sort of dreamed up while I was still in high school -- before I had met my husband."
"So?"
"Well, then I met my husband. And his last name is Lee..."
"So?"
"And so her name is Sadie Love Lee. You get it? 'Lovely.' It seems like I did it on purpose...like I was trying to be corny."
"But that's the best part."
"Oh, no. It's too much."
"No, no. It's perfect. It's why you met your husband."
"Huh?"
"Otherwise she would have just been Sadie Love Smith. That's not so perfect."
And he is right. Someday, I will take you to the basement of your grandparent's house and open up a big tupperware container of my high school mementos. And I will show you a few notebooks filled with high school biology and calculus, where your name is doodled at the bottom of list after list of names for my future children. Jackson Miles never happened, and neither did Benjamine Graeme. There are at least eight or nine different names for boys. But there is only one daughter.
I have known about you since I was 15 years old, Sadie. I have dreamed about you and talked to you. I have never doubted for a second that you would be Sadie Love.
Until my wedding day, when I realized your name would create that "lovely" wordplay. And then I worried and was anxious about how you might feel about it -- how people might talk about it, but I thought I would have several boys and time to think it over before you came.
Then you were born, and you were a girl, and my mind was spinning. I told the nurses all about the name I had held on to for over ten years and asked them what they thought about it. If it would be "too much" considering your last name.
And while I was hemming and hawing about it and asking the nurses if perhaps you'd be a better "Matilda" or "Nora," your father was texting everyone he knew:
"She's here. Sadie Love Lee. 9 lbs and 1 oz."
Dr. Rathke is right. And your father knew it when he ignored my fretting and started telling everyone all about you: Sadie Love Lee. It is not too much. It is not "too bad" that our last name is Lee. It is romantic, it is poetic. It is perfect. And so are you.
Love,
Mama
