The Baby

She was crying when I put her to bed.  “Mommy?  I want to sleep with you,”  she said in trembling voice.  Ordinarily, I’d just have scooped her up and taken her back down with me, but I was hesitant because David had surgery on his knee and children move and if she bumped into him, he would hurt.

So I said instead, “Would you like me to sing you your baby song?”  She smiled and I sang her song six times over and kissed her and told her I had to go to bed now, too.

Her lip quivered.

“I’m not your baby.”

My heart broke and I remembered all the times during the day that she’d climbed into my lap and then hopped out again when her little brother toddled over to claim that seat for herself.  He gets first dibs on this most coveted of all spots and all she gets are the leftovers.  She is still a baby and she is always and forever my baby, but this growing up business still hurts, her and me both.

I whispered that I’d be right back and hurried downstairs to help husband to bed.  In the lamplight, listening, he seemed resigned that there would be a three year old in bed, and I smiled and hurried back to gather my heart-sore child to myself.  She giggled when I took her hand.

Together, we slipped into bed, me in the middle, and she whispered silliness into the space between our faces and I whispered, “hush,” and I stroked her hair and she curled up as small as she could into the bend of my body.  Sometimes she pretended to sleep and then she really was and she really was my baby, all soft and warm and melty in the bed beside me.

I lay there staring at the curve of her nose and lips and forehead and cheeks and I know that she is my baby now and for always, though she won’t know it for herself for many, many years.  I know it because no matter how old my children grow, when I look at them, I see, always, the baby they once were.