Dear Addie:

While you haven't quite made it here yet, you're so close to joining us that I'd like to go ahead and celebrate this Mother's Day with you. I would like to start by thanking you for turning of your own volition into proper arrival position so that your mom didn't have to undergo this sort of terrifying sounding process to get you that way.

Soon you will be with us, with your cherubic newborn cuteness overwhelming us all. And your arrival will mark the point where your mom becomes, well, a mom officially. You won't ever think about it for a long, long time, but there was life before you for your mom. While you're growing up, she will always just be "Mom" and you'll never think about who she was before that. That's where I come in, because I knew your mom before she was Mom. When she was just Kim. Okay, that's not true. She was never *just* Kim because she was always in possession of a larger than life personality. And a wildly hilarious sense of humor. And a stellar rendition of "It's So Unusual" that she sang in a smoky, smoky karaoke bar in this little seaside town that will be so far from where you grow up that you'll keep forgetting where it was that your mom went to school.

But know this, dear Addie. That you are going to have the coolest mom who is going to love you so much more than she can say. And she's going to make you laugh and tell you crazy stories that are the figments of her imagination. She's going to teach you how to read and how to play the trombone and how to make sock monkeys. She's going to sing you "Me & Bobby McGee" like it's a lullaby, and you won't know until you're at least 15 that Janis Joplin lullabies are rad. She's never going to make you eat things you don't like - especially baked beans. And mayonnaise. She's going to drive you around in her car with the fuzzy steering wheel while the two of you sing "Got to be Startin' Something" and she's going to take you to Krispy Kreme where you'll buy donuts with the spare change in the car.

On this Mother's Day - your first - I wish you safe passage into this world. I wish you to know how loved you are already, and how much more loved you'll be in the coming days, weeks, and years. I wish you a good beginning to a life that will be filled with happiness and imagination and love. And I wish you good friends - the kind of friends your mom and me are. The kind of friendship that happens almost by magic, that is some unseen powerful force, that will carry you through the best and the worst. That will have you saying for years, "Remember that time we..." and loving that you have the past, the present and the future to be friends.

Happy Mother's Day, Addie. And Happy Mother's Day to my beloved friend Kim.

Love,
Ashley