M, too, looks at me as if I paint the sky.
She's almost 2 1/2, so I wonder how much longer I can count on the snuggle nest and the cuddle couch, the tears at school drop off, and the stretching-reaching arms begging me for bedtime stories.
She is a girl full of love. She loves her daddy and her Vicky and her Grammy. She loves her friends and her kitty. She loves her baby dolls (Holly and Dan, obviously). But so far, she reserves the most exhausting love for me.
It's the "crawl back into the womb" sort of love. She wants me to hold her. She wants me to wear her. She wants me to be her furniture. She wants me to pretend and build and color and sing and hide with her.
Mostly, she wants me to see her.
Seeing her is scary.
It's like seeing everything you've ever known about the world destroyed in a second and finding a new, unfamiliar world in the next. Seeing her is looking at the past and the future at the same time. Seeing her is knowing that you've given something very important away, and you can never get it back.
Seeing her is hot, bright and blinding. It's so blinding, that I can't even write about it unless I am 2,000 miles away where it's quiet and dark.
So much of parenting is isolating or frenetic or boring or frustrating - or all of those things in one minute. I live in that world, too. But just one look reminds me that I created this person, yet I don't own her. Somehow, she owns me.
Being a parent takes so much bravery as you give away to the world what you hold most precious and dear. And you don't give it away all at once, but a little bit every minute. It's a weight. I am so afraid I can't be as brave as she needs me to be.
I am here to help make her strong. I am here to protect her. I am here, and I am afraid, and full of hope, and...I am just here, and she is just there. And I wonder what I've done. And then she looks at me.
When she looks at me, it's a broad, warm, innocent true love.
When I look at her, really put down my distractions and see her, my eyes burn. She is everything.
0 comments:
Post a Comment