Lean In

I spent the whole day today with the littlest Quinn.  My forever baby because she will be my last.  The thing about baby number two for me is that she taught me how to lean in.  She was, and is, my Heartbreak Hill.  She came and I fully surrendered to the uphill battle of motherhood.  She stripped away the last of the should be's and will be's and can do's I had clung to in defining myself and left me with right now and just because and gone too fast.  Mamahood.  It's hard and slow but yet I can't explain why the time slips by like sand in my hands.  At times it moves more like honey on glass,  its progression is slow until the sweetness cascades over fingers that were too tight upon the glass to begin with.

My first baby came and she is all kinds of passion, rising up and crashing low and eyes that are always measuring, always calculating.  But I see myself so much in her that at times I feel I am reasoning with a younger version of myself.  The familiarity is soft and kind and envelopes our relationship like a well-worn blanket.  I meet and measure her needs because they have always been anticipated, in rhythm with my own steps.  And then came you my tiny, beautiful Heartbreak Hill.  The grade of your infancy was an easy slope from the beginning, almost masking the hard work necessary to plow forward with two instead of one.  I often look up and see you ahead of us, your pace steady and constant with humor in your eyes and light in your step.  You are at once a miracle of love and patience and energy.

You made me lean in.  You, possessor of your father's expressions, you are the complimentary tide that has completed the ebb and flow of our family.  You are not the mirror image of me, but an honest reflection of what I needed most.  You see baby, as human beings we are always, always, more alike than we are different.  Our waves crest but our greatest loves know when to pull us back.  They are our completion.