I'm not sure I'm the best person to be protecting anyone. 

[unk g]

What the hell. Go for it. 

[mom]

Dear unclaimed souls, swirling in the ether, unsure if you want to come join this hot, loud, wildly unsupervised world:

My husband and I would like to be your parents, and I'd like to make our case to you, humbly and directly.

First, let me set the stage. You would be born at a time in human history when you will never know the wild unfettered raging joy of a mammoth hunt. However, you will be able to travel the whole wide world on nothing but your savings from a crummy part-time job you had for three summers during high school. 

You will be able to read almost every single thing that any of the other humans in the world have written, but in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you this is both a blessing and a curse and to please avoid something called Twitter for your whole (hopefully) long life.  

You will spend more time reading snugly in front of fires than shivering in the rain and listening to the howls of wolves, though if we raise you well you will have spent at least a few nights of your life shivering in the rain listening to the howls of wolves. You may be addicted to cell phones, but...well, there is no but. You will be addicted to cell phones. It's not ideal, but it's better than typhoid fever.

You will be born in a small town in Oregon, to a mother who, if nothing else, means well. Your father will hold you all night whenever you need him to, in his strong arms, against his strong heart. 

One of your grandmothers has a house that backs up onto a park full of trees, with a piano in a sunlit corner. In the summer you will be able to stand on her deck and listen to live music in the park, and the rush of water in the creek. She will shower you with love and frogurt. She will likely be a strict disciplinarian, but, much like her daughter, she can be very easily outrun.

Your other grandmother is the most incredible cook of all time, and if you ever use recreational drugs and are overcome with guilt and need to unload this information on someone, she would be your best bet. In the interest of full disclosure, she will also do everything in her power to restrict your sugar and gluten intake. 

We cannot give you grandfathers. There's no way to sugarcoat that loss. I'm sorry.

But we do have an aunt and an uncle to offer. They are as different as the moon and the sun and will light your life in different ways. 

I can guarantee there will be dogs, but I'm not sure which ones. I can guarantee that your mother will teach you how to tell a good story. Your father will teach you how to work hard and do the right thing. I'm not sure who will teach you all the other social and moral skills but it will probably not be us. 

Do we need to sweeten the pot? I will bite my tongue when you want to travel just a little bit before I think you're ready. Your father will let you run free in our little town and is heavily leaning towards getting a trampoline. We will try to give you a sibling, one not too close for you to need them but not too far away for you to forget them. You can get from our house to the town's swimming pool in a five minute walk, one minute at a dead run.

You will learn how to brew beer and throw a pot. You will learn where all the best waterfalls are. You will be lectured on money management until you are finally old enough to run away and become a Vegas showgirl for minimum wage out of spite alone, at which point I will switch to bugging you to start a blog so I can read about it. 

You want to know what's in it for me, huh? Okay. I will be straight with you. I want to feel like I am in the center of a family again. It's probably too heavy of a burden to put on a child, but everyone puts too heavy of a burden on their child, so let me just be up front that this is mine.

What's in it for your future father? He wants to put you in wrestling at the age of three so he can live vicariously through you for fifteen years. He also thinks for some reason it would be hilarious to give you the middle name Beetlejuice. You have been warned, small soul.

It would be funny though, right?

Anyway, that's us. We're here. 

You might prefer Paris or Pensacola or Prague. You might bide your time for another thousand of our years and see what the world looks like then, if the wolves and the woolly mammoths have returned and range around fires where small children watch, wide-eyed. 

But if you want trees and the seashore, if you want books and farmland and wild berries by the sides of roads, if you want people who love you in equal parts imperfectly and fiercely, if you want to distract your father while I sneak in threadbare pieces of furniture that just need to be recovered with the fabric I have around here, somewhere-

Come on by. We can't wait to meet you.

Love,

Mom