Winter Solstice Letter, By Georgia Cranston

I’m writing this by the glow of firelight. My tea has gone cold, abandoned on the side table, and I’m wearing my favorite sweater, the one I bought in New York on the morning of our embryo transfer. I’m so caught up in the silent conversation between your body and mine that I forget everything else, while outside the longest night of the year is draping its indigo blanket over the land.

You’re awake in there. I can feel you turning. That slow roll that takes my breath, the way you push out against my hand as if to say I’m here, are you paying attention?

I am. I am always paying attention. I want to remember every moment with you.

Sweet baby, I don’t always have the right words to explain this magic that brought you and your parents into my life. You are not mine, but you are with me in a way that defies easy language. You live inside my body and know my heartbeat better than you’ll ever know my face. When I laugh, you feel it. When I am anxious, you startle. And when I rest my hand over you, you press back and everything feels complete. And yet, this is temporary. You belong to someone else.

It’s at once the most complicated and most simple thing I have ever done. 

For these months, I am the world you know, the temperature, the first voice, the walls that keep you safe while you become. I am the space between your parents’ longing and their arms. I know you won’t remember any of this, but I will. I will remember everything.

Your parents waited so long for you. And now here you are. The little embryo that could. A heartbeat on a grainy screen. A miracle that has changed our worlds.

The solstice reminds me of this: that light is born from the deepest darkness. That the turning point comes when you think you cannot bear another long night.

You are their turning point. You are their light returning. And I am so humbled to be the one who carries you through the dark toward spring.

I know you in a way no one else ever will. I know you get hiccups every afternoon when I try to take a nap. I know that you don’t like it when I drink anything cold because you protest with a flurry of kicks. And I know in the evening, you aren’t ready for us to settle down just yet. You’re the most active then, as if you’re saying not yet, let’s stay awake just a little bit longer.

I know the geography of you now. Where your back curves and where your feet are (always lodged up under my ribs). I know that if I press against you, you will press right back in response.

Sometimes at night, when everyone else is asleep and it’s just the two of us, I sit here just like I am now and talk to you. Just hello little one, I feel you. I’m here.

Your parents will know you in all the ways that matter in your lifetime— they’ll know your laugh, your fears. They’ll hold your hands through your first heartbreak, and cheer at your high school graduation. They will know who you become. But I am so lucky to know you right now, in this in-between space as you are still becoming. What an extraordinary privilege. 

Tonight I keep thinking about what it means to carry something precious that isn’t yours. I am holding the hope of your parents’ made flesh. I am keeping safe the child they dreamed into being through the sheer magic of wanting. It is like being trusted with someone’s heart outside their body.

Tonight, on this threshold between the year’s longest night and the slow return of light, I know this for what it truly is: sacred work. An act of love so strange and special that most people will never fully understand it. 

I am a bridge. A vessel. A temporary harbor. And you are teaching me things about love I didn’t know I needed to learn.

Spring is on its way, slowly but surely. The light will return, the days will lengthen, the world will warm. And you will be born.

I think about that a lot. Not really the labor so much, but the after. When you are placed in your parents’ arms and they meet you for the first time. I imagine their faces and the way your mother will cry— I know she will, I think your dad will too. How their pain will evaporate as they stare down and memorize the lines of your face. And how in all of this, I will be honored. So deeply honored to have been a part of this path.

And so, tonight, this is what I wish for you to know:

You are wanted beyond measure, not just by me— though I do love you fiercely in this strange, temporary way. But by two people who chose you before you existed. Who built you out of hope, and science, and stubborn, relentless love.

You have always been a resounding yes. 

May you move through this life knowing that.

May you find warmth in the coldest seasons.

May you trust that light returns. Always. Even from the deepest dark.

May you be brave, and kind, and certain of how beloved you are.

But for tonight, rest with me here by the fire. We still have time, you and I. And I am not ready to let you go just yet. 

When the time comes, and I place you in the arms that have been aching for you— know that I am sending you home. To the place you were always meant to be.

The longest night is ending, and light is already on its way back.

And so are you.