Dear Kaya,

It will be one week today since you were born, and to mark the occasion your father and I planted a hyacinth bean over your placenta. It was about time that we did it, especially since your grandmother was getting upset at encountering it every time she opened the fridge. There is a belief here, that must be shared by many places, that this means that you will be forever drawn back to this place; I hope it is true, as the garden is something that we work on with an eye to the future. I hope that this place will always be here for you.

Even though we have had some time to get used to the idea, I still find it hard to believe at times that you are really here. We had been waiting to meet you for so long, and as you grew inside my belly we tried to imagine what you would be like and how we would welcome you.

We don’t have a lot of rooms to work with, so we could not prepare a room for you, but we did make a little corner in our room down in the red house where we could keep all of your things, and where I could change and dress you.

I will admit that I wondered how you would fit into our family when you arrived. It seemed like such a change to have another person on board. Now that you are here though, it feels not so much that you have always been here as it does that your place in our family has been waiting for you to fill it. Baki greeted you almost as if he already knew you, and now that you are here it feels that our family would be incomplete without you.

It is hard to know how to tell you how important you already are to us all, and how much happiness you have brought us. In the moments we have together now, with you still so small, I want to welcome you into our family and thank you for having taken your place in our arms and in our hearts.

Love,
Mom