Is it so wrong to want to eat another person’s face? …Yes?
Okay, but how about if they have positively Winston Churchillesque cheeks on a newborn’s sweet-smelling li’l head? Isn’t that an edible juxtaposition? …Still no?
There is something about this kid’s Thousand Yard Stare that makes me feel faintly apologetic for the things I know she knows about me. She’s a Very Old Soul. (Maybe a grandmother of mine. Maybe a great. Maybe someone else’s– who also knows something about me.)
Making Susannah smile and coo (the precursor to the baby belly-laugh which I know is coming any day now and will undoubtedly break me into a trillion eyeball-poppingly ecstatic pieces) is baby crack to me. Now, I’ve never really been into any sort of crack…but I imagine it’s the kind of thing that, once experienced, you want more of. Immediately. Forever. But especially right now.
I realize it sounds like I am endorsing drugs. But I am not. I am endorsing babies. Specifically mine. (Suzy for mayor!)
Her frown, which usually precedes a full crying jag, gets downright Vaudevillian. Like those neon clown paintings on velvet that you see hanging in friends’ parents’ basement rec rooms. Except sadder.
Those moments are fleeting. They usually only last until she makes eye contact and realizes that- yet again- she KNOWS you and that things are completely and utterly copacetic.
This is followed by a shy smile and a look so utterly innocent and eager that it makes me want to take a needle directly in the face rather than have her experience a moment of pain in her entire [lengthy] lifetime.
But of course, a life devoid of conflict results in some pretty boring people. (And if there’s anything my kids ain’t- it’s boring.) I want her to have Character. And Self-Sufficiency. (But also Her Mother’s Number Forever On Speed Dial…or whatever they call it in the future.)
There’s something about a kid like this- both of ’em, in fact- that causes me to stop and realize that every single moment of my life (even the ones that were questionable at the time) have all led up to being with this guy in this town with these sets of circumstances…and have resulted in a smallish human being (lightly scented by apricot oil, at that) kitten-snoring against my collarbone and dreaming of something that makes her teensy heart twitterpate against my rib cage.
And then I realize that I’m doing everything right.
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