Liiiiiiiiiive!

Hey Kid,

Today I made myself throw up with nothing but the power of my mind.

You know, sometimes I ask myself if you'll be proud of my choices, proud I'm your mom. In this case, today, I'll let you off the hook.

I should amend: I threw up with nothing but the power of my mind and my overwhelming fear of swallowing toothpaste. I HATE toothpaste. I still use it, but I rinse and rinse and rinse and if I even suspect I might have swallowed the TINIEST wisp of minty paste, I usually dry heave until the stomach acid burns the flavor out of my mouth. This doesn't exempt you from using toothpaste, though. Sorry.

What's so disturbing about this, though, is that I don't actually know if I'm swallowing toothpaste or just minty spit, so sometimes, when I throw up like this, it's probably entirely in my mind.

The reason why I tell you this is because it's worthwhile for you to know that everything that happens to you, happens within your mind, and more importantly that I believe this idea and will probably warp your mind with it. While there may be an indifferent (or, as they say, "objective") reality, practicing outside your mind, you will never know it. Which is why you have to take care about the things you let yourself think. At a certain level, any assertion becomes a superstition, and people who believe in superstitions too hard can really freak themselves out.

Or vomit using nothing but the power of their minds.

One of the things I worry about, (AND I DON'T JUST WORRY BECAUSE I'M CRAZY, BELIEVE ME, WE'RE ALL FAIRLY NEUROTIC, ESPECIALLY MOMS), is that something awful will happen in my parts and I'll never have you. Or you'll be stillborn. Or brain damaged and never be able to read this. And what I worry after I worry that, is that the power of my mind has just reached into the future and created a dead baby.

But I don't write these letters to a dead baby, I write them to you. I can picture you in my mind: 15 years old, gangly, smart. If you've bothered to read this at all you're probably smirking or freaked out or both. I'm afraid you're a bit androgynous in my mind, because I'm trying hard to write these letters for either a boy or a girl. Hopefully you won't come out looking like a Hanson kid (look it up).

I just want you to know that I believe in you. You're going to be okay, because every one of these letters is a story I'm telling the universe inside my head, about how great you are.

I hope you believe in yourself too, but that's another letter.

I love you,



C.