Dear Gabe

Your mamma was not mad at the doctors for telling her that her situation would likely never change and that you were not possible. Doctors are trained to look at circumstances for what they are. They tend to look at norms and facts.

Dear Gabe,

I’ve been thinking of those days, many years ago, when I visited your mother. I would tap the empty space on the couch next to me, inviting her to sit there. Then I’d rub her stomach, and we would smile at each other, silently wondering if that dream of hers would ever materialize. The medical experts had told her that it was highly unlikely.

“It won’t happen.”

Today she sent a video of you kicking so hard I saw your little footprints on her stomach. What made you so excited? Was it her singing? She told me she loves singing to you and saying your name. Gabriel. She named you two weeks before the doctors could see everything. She said she knew her beautiful boy before they did. 

Last night on the news, some policemen pushed a group of young people to the ground and sprayed their faces with mace and tried to get them to stop asking for a better world. Some of them were bleeding; some poured milk into their eyes to soothe the burning from the mace. They were asking for the same type of world our fore-parents believed was possible. Many people said that what happened to them was bad. A terrible thing! Many said the world needs to change so that young people can believe in justice and protest racism without being attacked by police. Some say we need new ways of keeping our community safe from police. Some people said nothing at all. And some said no.

“Change won’t happen.”

Your mamma was not mad at the doctors for telling her that her situation would likely never change and that you were not possible. Doctors are trained to look at circumstances for what they are. They tend to look at norms and facts. Your mamma has had a very difficult medical history, and that is a fact. And your mamma has had to fight each day to remain hopeful. The doctors recently told her she needed another blood transfusion to keep you and her alive, but that COVID-19 has caused a blood shortage, so they don’t know when the blood will arrive. But she keeps giving you everything that she has, and you keep growing and needing more. She says she gets tired but never stops loving you. She says that you are worth whatever you cost her to exist. 

I started reading to you over the phone because the pandemic has made it difficult for me to travel to be with your mamma right now. But she says that your ears are developed, so I record messages for you and send her voice notes. I have been reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography lately. He was someone like your mamma. He asked for many impossible things, and each day he acted in ways that made no sense to people who did not like focusing on rare possibilities. One of the things he had said was: “One person, one vote.” But in those days, the people laughed at him.

“It won’t happen,” they had said. Mandela continued to speak about the world he imagined and knew could exist until they locked him away on an island that used to be the home of lepers. When the judge sentenced him to prison, he’d said, “I will return,” even though he was sentenced to prison until his death. How would he return? But the people understood what he meant when the future he imagined came to be in 1994. 

Many people won’t understand why I kept rubbing your mother’s empty stomach and speaking to it when I visited her in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. But each time I rubbed your mother’s empty, un-pregnant stomach, I was thinking of you. I expected that you’d be in there one day despite all the test results and impossible odds against a future like you. I believed that one day you would be here even though I didn’t understand what it would cost. You must have received your auntie’s message.

The year you came to be is also very special. Although some say 2020 is a strange year to be born, others say that in 2020, the world is being reborn and that everything that looks impossible and horrible will improve because we are at a turning point. They believe that things like the racism Mandela and our fore-parents used their faith and energy and brilliance to fight against will be defeated fully, someday. They even believe that the churches, the businesses, and the politicians who have always benefited from keeping things the way they are, and who allow them to continue while they look away, can change. Sometimes, I find believing in impossible things like these is painful. But you have been helping me.

Lately, I have been asking myself how and when I came to believe that you were possible after seeing your mamma in so many dangerous health situations before. How did I fight that crippling pain from off of my chest when things became scary for you and your mamma? Sometimes your mamma and I sing when we don’t have anything left to say or pray. We have been singing together a lot lately. And our friends have been praying and sending us warm messages from Vancouver and Burkina Faso and Fiji and Ottawa and believing the impossible with us. They have been believing that you and your mamma will be okay. Some of them have nicknamed you Super Gabe.

Because of how you came to be, I am entertaining the rare possibility that things in this world can change. I am considering the idea that maybe, all of the places and schools and churches I’ve been a part of will become filled with people who can admit what they see when they look in the mirror instead of looking away. 

Super Gabe, each day we thank God for you. We cannot see you fully yet. You are still growing, still mostly hidden in an expanding womb. But we can feel your movements. We can see your markings, and they point to something new.

 

With love,

Auntie Jasmine

Text: Jasmine Hamilton

Art: Charissa Poon