Flotation Device

You are my sunshine. I never knew how true those words were, just thought of "Sunshine" as another nickname or endearment like Peanut or Baby Girl, but I mean that in the purest, truest sense. You are the light in my days. Your little face in the morning, smiling next to mine as you wake up, sopping wet and starving hungry, but smiling anyway, is like the sun peeping over the trees. When I'm paused in my work, looking around as I think something over, your small self, pink-nested next to me, is like the burst of bright light when the clouds shift away. And when you cuddle up next to me at night, take a few pulls on your pacifier and sniff a small, contented sigh, it's the same peaceful closing of the day that sunset offers. I track your presence as devotedly as any sunflower ever tracked the progress of the sun across the sky.

It feels a bit backwards, to be so dependent on you. I like for you to be happy, of course, but even when you're not, your presence offers a purpose, an anchor, that keeps me from drifting off course during my day. Even when you're red-faced and in full voice, most of the time I'm thinking, "Oh, she's experimenting with the new vocal ranges she's discovered!" I'm a bit frightened about how I'll manage this when the day comes that my decisions will make you displeased, but I think that's how it goes with mothering - I'll know the necessity of that decision in the bigger picture while you'll only sense the frustration of it in the moment. Right now, we bob through our days, treading water together, doing our best to keep our heads above water, and I'm never certain who depends most on whom, but I cling tightly to you and somehow, we manage to stay afloat.

Our society seems, at the moment, to value pushing babies away from us at lightning speed. You're born and we commence immediately to push you toward adulthood - we want you to sleep alone, to sit up, to walk, to feed yourself. Maybe this is because I came to all this later, but I'm contented to savor it. I'm pretty sure you'll be feeding yourself before you start kindergarten. No doubt, you'll be sleeping through the night in your own bed before you start high school. You came into the world with a little map all your own, and I don't think we're at the point where I need to be yanking it from your hands, shouting directions and pushing you to get wherever it is you're going faster. The sun finds its way across the sky, and I'm certain that with less guidance from me than I'd like to believe, you will too.