The Last One
There is just something about your last baby.
But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after–oh, that’s love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she’s gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She’s the one you can’t put down.” Barbara Kingsolver from The Poisonwood Bible
I just can’t put Emme down — even when she squirms out of my arms, I am still holding her close. Maybe it is because I know what is coming — namely the hormones of a 9th grader, which I would not wish on anyone. But mostly I think I just know in my heart how fast it all goes, how even when I try to hold on to every single detail of what she looks like and what she says, that so much of it gets lost. And so each afternoon when I rock her to sleep for her nap, I put away the to-do list that threatens to rattle in my mind, and I stare into her eyes. I whisper promises of ever-lasting love. I hold her and try to memorize what it feels like to nestle her in my arms. To remember what it feels like to cuddle someone who oozes joy. And I am so thankful that at 21 months she is still so much of a baby. She only has a few words and talks in her baby babble most of the time. He hair is a mop that has never been cut, in some sort of flip, feathered, girl-mullet… and I love it. I don’t want to cut the hair that has always been there. Maybe for her 2nd birthday, but not. just. yet. I love that her kisses are outloud, spoken “mmmmmmmmmwaaahhhs” and her cheeks and legs are chubby and delicious. She can point to her nose, her ears, her belly button, and her arm pits. And will stick out her tongue on cue. I want to bathe in her cuteness, letting it flow over me with the profound love that a mother has for her child.
There will be time for hair and shoes and fashion and lots of talk…probably on the phone to, gulp, boys. There will be time to get her that cell phone or the latest music player or whatever it will be in 13 years that she “must have.” Dave and I laughed last night that by the time Emme is in high school (and the other four kids are out of the house), she will have a phone in her room and her own number and a TV and a computer and a lock on her bedroom door and probably no curfew. That we’ll text her to come down the hall to have dinner with her aging parents. And maybe that is how it will be when she is a teenager. But more than likely I will want to sneak in at night and climb into bed with her and watch her, hoping that she will sleep through the antics of her crazy mother whose heart aches a bit.
For she is the last one.
Awe, man!
I was doing so well reading this lovely, heartfelt, post and keeping it together, until half way through and I started thinking about all my “lasts” with my last baby. My 10 year old baby. My spunky baby that loves nothing more than to cuddle up together, I mean really cuddle up, and just talk about “things” as she says.
Grab that beautiful little Emme and don’t let her go until you absolutely have to. :-)
I need a baby fix.
Time to call for my grandkids to come over again!
Kari, what a beautifully written piece. You made me cry—-a good cry! :) My friend and I were talking about how difficult it was when we realized that no one at our house would be excited by the annual “Toys R Us” Christmas Catalogue arriving in the mail or think the toy section at Costco was Santa’s wish list come true. Each stage is sure amazing to be a part of in our kids’ lives and so special to soak up, that’s for sure!
I’m right there with you Kari… our poor “lasts”. My BABY Will gets way too many kisses and hugs in one day I’m sure he’ll have to go to counseling on account of me… but maybe he won’t be our last :)