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Daughter,
I wait for the morning light to filter through the courtyard trees and into my room. At first just a glimmer and then sliding through the window, across his sleeping form and resting on your soft hair nestled against my chest – lighting up your beauty.
The nights are long. Three we will be here in this room of nurses and plastic beds, magic and new life. These nurses come to wake me every few hours, but I am only pretending to sleep. I am afraid to stop watching you, and my body is still racing from the surge of birth. You are nothing but sleep, and I am all wide eyes taking in every bit of you.
So I wait for the light to come because that means I can stop pretending. It means he will wake and we will smile and talk. Breakfast will come, and I will be able to see you lit by sunlight instead of the dim glow of the hallway’s fluorescent bulbs.
Once the sunshine has bathed him, I hand you off and walk haltingly to the restroom. These are gentle moments – gentle with my healing body and your tiny budding life. Gentle with each other. I return, ease myself into bed, and we gaze at you. We have created again. Our coming together has born fruit – again. We are not always this gentle with each other, but in this morning light I think maybe we can be. We have been used for miracle, haven’t we? We are the Nile and new moon. We are Adam and Eve finding our way. Maybe this birth will be the rebirth of us, or maybe you will be one more thread stitching us together.
If we are gentle maybe we will hear all that we are meant to be. Maybe if we are gentle we will forgive as we have been forgiven.
Either way, I wait for the morning light so he will wake and smile at me. Daughter what more can one hope for in love? A smile morning after morning all these long and beautiful years. I will pray you know this too one day.
