Sitting here, enjoying the peace and quiet of nap time, listening to the breeze in the trees and spending a little time playing online. You let your guard down.
You see an article about yet another mother learning her child’s image has been taken and used in an internet hoax, used to provide some poor, sick individual with the attention they crave at the expense of another. And you think of the photos posted to another blog, in another life and you worry. So, you suck it up and you load the page for the first time in years and you see the photos of her and she is so tiny and so far away. And as soon as you reassure yourself that her life hasn’t been taken for someone else’s purposes, you sink below the waves as they crash over you, knocking you off your feet. Taking your breath away.
Because there should be two others here, having to be reminded to play quietly while their sister naps. Helping get dinner ready before Daddy comes home. Filling this space that is always. going. to. be. empty.
Five years is nothing. It still feels like yesterday.
Moonpie turns three this weekend. She is the best and most wonderful thing to ever happen in my world. I wish watching her hit this momentous milestone, taking this final step out of baby-ness didn’t bring so much baggage with it. I hug her longer than she would like sometimes. I fight against my desire to wrap her in bubble wrap to keep her safe from every sharp corner, every bump and bruise. She will have to suffer with a baby monitor in her room probably until close to the point of indecency. She will struggle under and I will struggle against my desire to over protect because this grief? This awful sneaking thief that catches me unaware so many times? It taught me that you absolutely never know. That all that is beautiful can go to shit the second you look away and nothing and no one will be able to stop it and all you can do is Be Here Now. This moment. That’s it. That’s all you can be absolutely sure of. Treasure it, suck every drop out of it…even the moments when you are so tired and angry and wish you could be anywhere/anyone else…because the sweep of the second hand can change everything and five years down the road it catches you unaware.
