My Lily girl. So sweet, so kind. Full of empathy and compassion and love. So giving, so wise. She is my greatest teacher in this life. She is my greatest love.
I am honored, HONORED, to be her mother.
I cannot express how much I love her. How just the scent of her head sends me into a fit of memory. She is suddenly 2 days old after her first bath at home. She is three months old falling asleep on my chest. She is a year old with a raging fever. All of this from just the scent of her head.
I look at her and I see the world. I see everything through her eyes. Her sadness becomes mine, her fear mine to comfort. If anyone dared to hurt her I would obliterate them. I look at her and I see her not just as she is now, but how she was when she was so tiny and helpless. I see the whole picture.
When I was pregnant, I never understood this whole secret society I would be hazed into. Woemn would look at me with my tiny newborn, and their eyes would fill, their gazes turning inward. I know now they were feeling the deep primal pull a newborn can touch you with. The feeling that you would do anything- ANYTHING to feel your child in your arms like that again.
The need is beautiful and painful and terrifying. And it is also intense and overwhelming. To be the sole source of another persons existence is such a deep responsibility in every way.
I long for her as she was.
This picture is special to me. Lily was around 3 weeks old here, still so small, and so fragile. She was nursing every 2 hours. I was exhausted. But in the days before this picture was taken, we had fallen into a routine of sorts. Nursing, sitting, dozing together. It was at this point, on this day, that I looked at her and utterly LOVED her. Now, I loved her before this time, yes, but it was different on this day. The fear of being a new mother left me, and I simply loved her. Realized I would die for her. Realized that she was MINE, and I was HERS. Realized, above all, that I could do this. I could be a mother. It was powerful and life changing.
There are things you cant see here. My hair was unwashed, my face free of makeup. My nipples were raw and bleeding. I was still healing from birth. I was still in my pajamas at 8 o'clock at night. My life was in chaos. But I was happy. I was totally in love with this little being I had fought so hard to conceive and carry. And God, when I looked down at her, at her perfect little mouth drawing milk from my breast, at her little hands clasped over my heart, I knew she loved me too. Needed me. Loved me.
It keeps changing, this love. Some days are hard. She is stubborn and strong willed. But she is a joy. She is full of life. And she is mine. What a gift.
