In the Gentle Night

Brixton likes his mama to put him to bed.  Every night is the same: quiet playtime, books and a night-night bottle.  His long body barely seems to fit anymore across my lap, his fat hands reach up and touch my face in the soft glow of the lamp, his eyes lock with mine and he smiles.  

Some nights he wakes and cries.  Daddy's strong arms hold him, but he cries still, the tears trailing down his face like a trickling stream down a canyon front.  It's mama that he wants.  His arms reach out to me, his warm body cuddles into mine, the wet tears pooling in the bowl created between my neck and collar bone.  I hold him close, breathing him in, this baby.  

Looking back at those early newborn days is like looking back a century.  Gone are the 3 nightly feedings, the tiny infant stir metallic over the monitor.  Gone are the countless diaper changes, the spit-up rags decorating the floor, raging cries in the night.  Those nights I dreaded, the ones I worried about so much, with the exhaustion and stress, passed with barely a whimper.  Sometimes, I look at the baby now in my arms and wonder how that time could have already gone by.  Wasn't he always this big?  Didn't he always sleep though the night?  No, but I blinked and those moments ended.  

Sometimes while rocking him, he falls into a soft slumber.  The light falls across the roundness of his cheeks, over his pouting lips, across the gentle arc of his nose.  His eyelashes, so thick and long, outline the slope of his eyes, my eyes.  His easy breathing, punctuated by the chirps of dreams far away, a rhythm that lulls me to sleep.

I look at him in wonder.  Is this real?  Is he really here?

All this time passed and still I marvel.