We stayed up late watching a movie on Saturday, The Place Beyond The Pines to be exact. We didn't get to bed until one a.m. as we spent a good forty five minutes after the credits rolled discussing the movie. Then it was after two am and I was still awake. As the minutes accumulated and it got closer and closer to 2:17 am my mind went back. Back to that December night... I heard her cry. My voice soothed her. I fed her for the first time. She was quiet as was the room. We were three. The missing puzzle piece popped into place that night.
And then I thought about her as a teenager, a moody hormonal teenager to be exact. I thought about the fights we may have, the slammed doors, the stomping of feet. I thought of worse things too as they do happen and can happen. I come from a big family (twelve aunts and uncles, twenty-nine cousins and countless second cousins) and so I've seen people have truly heartbreaking experiences raising teenagers. I've heard about the visits to the police station, the expulsions from school, the drugs and alcohol and abuse. But then when you have a child of your own and you remember those things and just imagine... your blood goes cold.
She's so innocent, so pure, so perfect. She's an extremely happy baby - always smiling, giggling, bobbing her head and doing her version of dancing. To think about that changing. Ever. To even the slightest degree is horrifying. And yet...
And so I try and remind myself that this, this, is the easy part. The sleep deprivation is due to the fact that we had a very hungry caterpillar for a baby not because we were sitting at the dining room table staring at the phone and worried sick. The crying is because no matter how hard we try to prevent it she enjoys dangling plastic toys over her head until they inevitably fall not because she's had her heart broken in half and you feel like there's nothing you can do to fix it. The frustration comes from the fact that she seems to gravitate towards every trash can when she's crawling not because she's gravitating towards every douchebag in her freshman class. So yeah, this is easy.
In the meantime I will pray that we are able to preserve her pure heart, her joyful spirit and her sweet soul as long as humanly possible and that when struggles come her way that we can ease her sorrow and dry her tears.
