The time goes so fast, they said. Take pictures, take videos, so you’ll remember, they said.
I’ll remember, I thought, but I find comfort in instructions, and I followed them.
It appears that I’ve forgotten.
I asked my partner last week when our baby stopped making the inchoate newborn noises that kept me awake at night. Months had past since we’d heard them, but I’d forgotten since when. I hadn’t known we were coming to the end of that time.
I recently flicked back through the earliest videos I’d recorded, marvelling at the slowness of the movements that have become deliberate and finer, the nasal squeaks that have blossomed into a wordless voice full of expression.
In just under five months, the skinny, scrunched bundle we brought home from the hospital has transformed into a baby – one who babbles and laughs and tries unsuccessfully to roll over; one with likes and dislikes, her very own temperament, and characteristics that signal a nascent personality.
And I’ve forgotten, just as everyone assured me I would.
I’ve forgotten just how tiny and new she was, and I am stunned at the videos and photos that remind me. I’ve forgotten just how tired I was, though the feeding times scratched into a notebook every two hours provide the proof. I’ve forgotten the feeling of just getting up and ready for the day, but I imagine it to be quite freeing, indeed.
This is a fleeting time and it needs to be cherished. Nearly five months already gone, and in them I have done little besides loved.
I wrote once that love is a verb, and I understand that yet differently now. I spend my days and nights awash in it.
It is this feeling that has me writing while growing increasingly uncomfortable on the couch while the baby sleeps in my lap. I could be doing so many other things with this time . . . but I’m not. Cherish.
And I cherish the drunken glow that washes over me when I breathe in her baby smell, or when she lays her head on my shoulder when tired, or in the moments of clear, wordless communication.
Tears prick my eyes when I think of the deepest truth I have ever held and will not attempt try to explain: My daughter and I are one being.
I cherish this feeling, too.
I want to remember. They say I’ll forget, and they’ve been right, but I hope to remember, and when not with the brain, then with the body (which is a manifestation of the brain, but that’s a blog post for a different time).
It’ll be all too soon before she doesn’t want to be held anymore, all too soon before she slams the door shut.
And when she’s raging, I hope to find the feeling of tears pricking my eyes, tickling the back of my throat, because my daughter is sleeping in my lap and the world is simple. Because we are one, despite how I know she’ll pull away, despite how I know my role is to giver her wings and watch her soar.
I’ll catch her when she’s ready to land, this daughter who gave me the gift of being her mama. And I cherish that, too.
By Rebecca Michelle 