The house is quiet; everyone else is asleep early. I've nursed my baby girl in a bath of moonlight pooled on my bed. After she finally (finally!) decides she's satisfied, I'm rewarded with the sound of her slow breathing. I soak her up in my arms and she melts into them. I whisper a prayer into her soft hair, "Please don't grow up. I don't want to lose this moment." Though as soon as I say it, I regret it. "No, baby," I whisper, "go ahead and grow. I want you to grow. But Self, never forget this moment-never. Promise?"
Even as I promise myself to permanently store the feeling of her squishy, warm body asleep on mine, I know that I will fail. It will fade.
Still, I grasp for evidence that yes, I can replay those movies anytime I like. I squint in the dark, trying to open a floodgate of memories of my older two children at this stage. Yet, what comes is more of a trickle.
Where are they? I know I deliberately savored the moments with them, too. I'm sure this isn't the first time I've made this promise to myself. So, where are the memories?
They must be in my soul somewhere. Yet it seems I'm full of today, today, and cannot dig deep enough through it to get down to yesterday. Or six years ago.
Six years? Yes, six. My firstborn was six months old, about this time six years ago In many ways, a blink. In others, a lifetime.
I echo the cry of mothers over millennia: "It is going too fast!" For in a breath, a buzz cut replaced the blond curls, size 2 shoes (almost manly) overthrew soft leather booties, and knock-knock jokes usurped the songs of toddler babble. It aches.
HoneySweetie's sigh brings me back to the present. I nuzzle her warm head under my chin and sway. It is the Mothersway-- an innate dance, which we all do while standing in circles talking, even if none of us are holding a baby. It is, at times, all we need to do to bring comfort, rest, and peace. Other times, it is all there is left to try. It comforts us, too.
I don't have an answer. Why can I not fully relive something I have known so viscerally? Why must I lose what I so fiercely desire to hold? I do not want them to stay babies, or toddlers, or even children. Each new day brings new discoveries, which would be impossible were they to remain static. I would not trade that delight. But that's what it is-- a trade. I must release the past to explore the future. I must lose that life to gain a new.
They're not my own to hold, after all. I am not my own to hold, either. In surrender, I release my prized bundle to dream in her bed. And I'll keep relinquishing, waving my white flag to Time, even as I greedily sop up every delectable moment into every pore.
