Head, shoulders, knees and toes.
Let me be clear, with myself as much as with anyone else: I do not want another baby. I am finished with the whole parenting-a-baby thing. Sometimes I felt like I was doing it very well, other times I felt like I was failing profoundly, but in any case, done is done. And I do mean done. Even toddlerhood and the preschool years are distant images in the rearview mirror.
But.
Lately I find myself arrested by sudden echoes of those early years. A snippet of a song that I used to sing to them, or the scent of a treat I used to make. And I realize that while I do not want another baby, at times I long for my babies, for the diapered heft that I nestled against my hip, for the laden-down stroller I would always have at least one hand upon. I miss the quiet rhythm of those days. And while I recall resenting it at the time, part of me even misses that encumbered feeling — that sense that everything, everything, would take at least twice as long as it does for anyone else, and that even my physical presence wasn’t really mine, but out on permanent loan.
The other day my daughter looked at me and suddenly grinned, and I flashed back to ten years ago, right after 9/11, when I was nursing her in the rocker in her bedroom. It was a gorgeous fall day, and I had spent all morning crying, but I was calm, and I looked down at her as she nursed, her eyelids starting to flutter their way to a nap. Then she popped her eyes open, locked her gaze onto mine, pulled away, and grinned. It was the very same expression.
