A perfectly round midsection appeared on the black and white screen, and the ultrasound technician measured it. With a few buttons and mouse clicks she threw a dotted circle around it like a lasso. Organs swam in and out of view. Kidneys… stomach… And then: “It’s a girl!” The announcement came like a shot, and indeed I was pierced. I cried out something wordless, short and strange—a combination giggle, at the sister that C will have, and a gasp, at the fact that there will be no you.

Because I was almost sure you were in there, rapping away at me, instead of where you are, wherever you are, nestled, perhaps, in the womb of God, where you have opted to stay for eternity rather than come and be with us. And why would you not stay in that snug and blessed place?

What does it mean that there will be no son?

I have been cautioned not to go too far down this road.
Go back.
Proceed no further.
Beyond this place there be dragons.

Gone are the days when having a boy automatically meant X, Y and Z, or even just XY. Boys as large and clattering things, expanding to fill the space available. Girls as meek and gentle, legs curled under them on the couch as they tuck into a quiet book.

Come to think of it, maybe those days never existed.
Come to think of it further, forget the maybe.

Still, I peek through the cracks in that padlocked gate, and can see just the smallest sliver of a landscape that is off-limits to me…

“Snips” will remain a mystery, for you will not be here to teach me just why little boys are made of them.

I will miss the bemusement at your alienness.
Perhaps the gap would be obvious—maybe you would pluck the athletic gene from some remote branch on the family tree. Or perhaps you would share your father’s love for model rockets or other contraptions I find benignly pointless. Or maybe, you would love theater and song just as I do… But even so, you would still be a foreigner dressed in my genetic clothing, beyond my grasp, flesh of my flesh, who sprouts chest and leg hair during puberty, who has the enviable ability to pee against a tree when it’s expedient.

I will miss raising a feminist man.

I will miss dancing with you at your wedding, my cramped mother-of-the-groom shoes kicked under a skirted table, and later that night I will cry because how could the three-year-old boy who looked at me through some Freudian haze and pronounced me the most beautiful woman in the world be all grown up and married?

I will miss meeting your own children, watching you with them and realizing with a start that you hold a baby the same way your father once did.

Those things will not be, but perhaps they would not have been anyway.

The truth is, I do not know exactly what I will miss because there will be no you. I was surprised when I heard “It’s a girl,” but I would have been just as surprised if I had heard “It’s a boy.” It’s just a surprising moment, that’s all. It’s the first moment that the child stops being generic and starts becoming particular. Something is lost, a gate clangs shut and the lock clicks smartly into place, but much is gained. I will miss you, but each of my daughters will now have a sister and be a sister.

Thank you for giving them that gift.