Moments

I am lying in the middle of a king bed in a hotel room, waiting for my husband to get back from his training, with my 18 month old's head on my stomach. Her knees tuck under her in the child's pose, her curls scrunch against my shirt, and her back moves up and down as she finally naps.

I want to lie here forever. I want to breathe her entirely in, to drink up the precious calm, to be as engulfed by her as she is by me.

I want to write about moments with her. About her giggle, about the way she looks up at me from the jogging stroller, about the way her eyes are fading from blue to brown after all this time.

I want to write about how crazy I am about her, about how she is my everything, about how nothing else in my life has ever made me feel so complete, so in love, so full of everything.

But it feels like a lie.

Even though it isn't.

Some days, most days, I feel touched out. I want to be left alone. I want to be a grown up for a while and be able to think straight for a minute. I want to do things that feel big, that make me feel competent and smart, that make me feel like a rational human being.

Today was bad. I felt angry. I couldn't look at her. I thought someone else needed to come and take over because I couldn't possibly continue to parent.

I thought worse things too.

But those things don't tell the story of who I am as a mom.

When she wakes up, there will be a moment when she rolls over and gazes directly into my face. She will position herself like an infant cradled in my arms. She will touch my nose, her nose, my eyes, her eyes. Neither of us will speak. In that moment, I will feel more connected to another human being than I ever thought possible. I will be completely consumed by love and I will know that she is too, and I won't question why.

And then she will want a cracker, or to watch TV, or to play with her ball, and we will both go about our day as if neither moment, the good or the bad, happened.