The Weight of You

Not long after getting married, I saw a picture online of a baby, maybe 9-10 months old, a sweet, smiling baby with dark hair and a few new teeth.  In the picture, she was being held aloft by two feminine arms, and the crease in the woman's wrist haunted me throughout my pregnancies. I ached for that crease in the wrist, that weight of a life being swung overhead.  Before Truman was born, I felt that ache like a wound, especially with a pandemic surrounding us, two previous miscarriages.  I worried I'd only know the ache, never the weight of a child in my arms. After he was born, that ache was replaced, for a time, with joy. But pandemic fears, the hustle and exhaustion of new motherhood, I didn't savor the weight of him in those first months. I was desperate for him to be bigger, stronger, to feel less fragile in what felt like an increasingly dangerous world. 

You're different, my girl. You sleep less soundly than your brother, smile more often, and I do not hope for time to speed up the way I did with him. I am not the same woman I was when your brother was born. I am less scared, more hopeful. These last few months since your birth, I've held you, lifted you above my head, felt your perfect weight against my wrists, and thanked God for the miracle of you and your brother. I have treasured you better than I did your brother at this age, and that has allowed me to cherish you both more fully. 

I still think of that picture, still remember that empty ache as I waited to meet you. The weight of you in my arms has rooted me into my own life in a way nothing ever has.  The disappointments of the world lose a bit of their sting when I balance you on my hip, your tiny fingers gripping my hair. And in those rare, precious moments when you rest on one shoulder and your brother on the other, I know I hold the whole world in my arms. Thank you, Johanna, for the crease in my wrist.