In My Heart

I pick her up.  Her legs curve naturally and instinctively around my waist. She perches naturally and instinctively on my hip as one of her gentle arms rests across my shoulders. She purses her lips and leans in to kiss my cheek - gentle and feather soft. It is the first time I have been kissed by her without any prompting. No kiss has ever felt sweeter.

I pick her up and, as I do so, feel a physical sense of picking up my own heart as well. The weight feels so familiar. My arms are not arms, they are a clever mechanism of rods and pulleys and they were crafted solely for this moment in time. To retrieve my very own heart from where it was resting in the shallow bottom of a newborns' crib.  I place her back down, just to relish the feeling of picking her and my heart back up again.

I pick him up. It is dark and he is hungry. We snuggle into bed together, and as I feed him I feel a magnetic pull from behind me. The tide is being sucked out - all of the love collected over my entire 26 years is pooling together. It is dragged from me. I am emptied from all of the love I have ever known, I can feel the wave of it building and building and building. The weight of it gathers just over my head. It is too great. It crashes. Over my head and into my very core. There is no feeling inside of me other than the weight of this great love. It rocks me. My son is six months old, and I have just fallen irreversibly in love with him.

I pick her up. I don't know when it happened. Her feet knock against my knees as I carry her. When did she get so tall??

I pick her up. She is upset. She is crying. But beneath the faint curtain of her still baby-downy hair I can see a faint smile. She's learned how to quickly get a cuddle from Mum!

I pick him up and carry him gently down to his bed. "Mommy carry me," he yawns. "Sure thing, baby boy," I whisper back right next to his ear. "I'm not a baby!" he states with no small amount of indignation. "Yes darling, but you will always be my baby. Always, always." He smiles secretly. He knows this. He has heard it several times before. I plan to tell him several thousand times more.

I pick her up and we tumble over backwards together. It is a fun game. Oh! You are so strong! You knocked me right over!!! She giggles and she giggles and she giggles. That sound is a live wire connected right to my heart. I am storing it to use as energy later on a rainy day. Who knows how much it might take, so I keep gathering more and more. Every day I gather more.

I pick one up. And then I pick up another and one more. Every day I pick each of them up and I keep them in my heart. They say that one day your parent will put you down and will never pick you up again. I know this not to be true. There will never be a time that I do not pick my children up again. I will pick them up and place them in my heart each and every day that I live.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

e. e. cummings

Holding Baby Meggie & Baby Trippy - 2015