Before I left for work this morning I crept into my daughter’s room as I always do. It’s become our little regimen over the past eighteen months, and as I peeked inside her crib where she lay, little bottom pointing to the sky, I realized a change in routine might be coming soon.
Every morning before work I allotted enough time to feed my baby girl. I would scoop up her warm body, pull it to my chest, and graze her forehead with my lips. Feeling full of love beyond compare I would almost float to the rocker where I offered her morning meal.
This morning was no different, but threatening my little happy place were thoughts of change and what that might mean. She didn’t really need to eat before I left. It wasn’t required like it once was. It was just something we both enjoyed, and something I knew I had needed to send me properly on my way.
One last moment for the morning to rock and lull. I had told myself for months that the extra milk lengthened her sleep, but I knew it also fed my soul. And as I peered at my baby this morning drinking her morning milk like we always did I wondered, what will I do when we don’t do this anymore?
When I had first pulled her from her slumber my hand had touched a soggy bottom, a leak from her diaper causing dampness. I felt quite needed as I stripped off her cold, wet sleeper, placed a dry diaper, and then new pajamas on my drowsy girl. She would have been soaked had I not come along, I thought proudly.
I reminded myself of my necessity as I gazed down at her feeding in my lap. I rocked and I wondered, what will I do when she doesn’t need me to change her diaper anymore?
I shifted her warm body to my other arm, and I noticed the weight of her. She was growing, but was still so small. My baby. Just the night before she had fallen asleep in my lap, and I had nestled her in the bend of my propped knee. I had reveled in the closeness of my sleeping bundle, and it wasn’t until my foot began to tingle that I finally put her down. What in the world would I do when she got too big to fit so perfectly there?!
It had all happened so quickly was the thing. So much faster than the first time around. She had just been born, and then suddenly she was running around after her big sister. She was walking up to the refrigerator and asking for “cheezzzz.” She could say, “momma” and “bye.” She could say all kinds of words, new ones each day, and as she began stringing them together into phrases I wondered, what will I do when she starts to talk as much as her big sisters?! I don’t know if I can handle any more questions than I currently field.
What would I do when her baby fat turned to lean muscle, and cheekbones appeared where chubby dimples once beamed? What about knuckles and ankles? I almost wanted to cry over my grief of fleeting baby cankles.
It was all happening far too quickly. She was growing up right before my eyes, and I wasn’t sure what I would do when she wasn’t my baby anymore.
The pace of my rocking slowed, as if by my ceasing of movement I could also somehow stop the passage of time. I looked down in my lap and my baby girl was staring back at me. The look of amused puzzlement made me wonder if she had somehow linked into my very deepest thoughts and found the whole affair quite silly.
I smoothed her hair then, and I smiled in spite of myself. I looked into her big, beautiful eyes, and I just kept looking.
I memorized how the brown mixed with flecks of green like a boy’s prized marble. I tried to count her eyelashes as they batted at me, and I took account of the way her pouty lips pursed as she drank.
I committed not just the moment, but the very essence of it to my mental memory banks. I knew I couldn’t stop the “when,” as it would surely happen no matter my emotions. All I could do was capture each day as the fleeting jewel it was, capture it and bury it like treasure in my heart.
When my baby was no longer a baby, by standard definition, I would seek out this moment. I would find it, and I would be fine.