Why We Started An Email Account For Our Baby
October 14th is when the idea was birthed. A bit ironic….”birthed.” At this point in time we had been trying to get pregnant for a year. I thought getting pregnant would be easy. You stop your birth control and then…BOOM! A baby appears. Not necessarily. A year later we were still hoping and waiting and close to pausing our efforts to try. A month before I was sitting in a teacher workshop with George Couros, one of my favorite educator gurus. He was speaking in a session on innovation and technology in the classroom and shared this tear-jerking Google Chrome commercial:
Go ahead. Grab a tissue. Fast forward to the month of October where it all began. This was the month I gave up. I said, “Ok, God I give this year of trying and frustration to you because I just can’t even.” Yes, just like that I gave up on the baby trying. I was also reminded of that workshop and the video of “making the web what you want it to be.”
So, although I gave up, we decided to set up an email account for our baby. Our baby who didn’t even exist yet. We initially did it out of faith and decided we would just write our non-existent baby until……
Then, a month later (funny right?) we found out we were pregnant. I didn’t believe it. I took about 5 pregnancy tests before the first doctor’s visit. Thereafter, our motivation for the email account grew to be something much greater– we would document moments, thoughts, and even better….a legacy of dialogue to our child.
Of course we put the typical milestones of sonogram photos, birth, development and birthdays. Additionally, we also put our thoughts, wonderings and even some of our hopes. I must say I was even vulnerable enough to put some of my fears. Not so much as to scare our child, but for him to know that we’re human. I spoke of growing pains I had that I pray he is able to avoid himself. I wrote about how much he is loved and will be loved. I wrote about women and my motherly attempts to give him the best guide for understanding how we function. I wrote about how much I love his dad. I wrote about balancing it all for his sake.
In days and years to come I’ll write about things I don’t want to forget to tell him, show him, teach him. His dad will offer wisdom that only he can best articulate. These life lessons and testimonies will be layered between memories and moments.
One day, when he is older, we will share this email account with him. Right now, we’re thinking his 18th birthday would be a great point as he begins his journey into manhood.
We plan to continue to send him emails as long as our fingers can type and technology upholds itself. If he ever needs an anchor or guide along the way, even through adulthood, he can always refer to his “gift of mail.”
We are in an age and time where everything is at our fingertips. For parents, this can be a scary time as there seems to be a limitless capacity to the tech world and the threats therein. However, I love the message from the commercial, that the “web is what you make it.”
How awesome that we have the capacity to utilize technology in a way that will leave such a valuable resource….your parents’ words, voice, advice and photos. I grew up with picture albums (which are just as precious) and the memories I have in my mind. I’ve lost family members, particularly grandparents, of whom I grew very close. I sometimes sit and try to remember the sound of their voices. The words of wisdom or sayings they spoke. I can only find these elements in my heart and memory. I cannot imagine how fulfilling it would be to still have their printed words or recorded voices to reread and replay. Someday we’re all going to come to that place. The place where we remain without some of the people we love the most. And when that day comes for our son, I want him to still have a piece of us.
In fact, I would love for this trend continue so that his own family can have a piece of us, a piece of him, and so on……
Until then,
You’ve Got Mail 🙂
