The Moments...

I drank a little bit of pure, unadulterated love tonight. And my knees are still a bit weak. My baby boy was crying as his daddy laid him down for bed. I heard his cries from my comfortable spot on the sofa, clacking away at the keys in one furious attempt to finish a transcript. I listened a bit regretfully, since I had hardly spent any time with my little guy today, determined as I was to wade through this thick job and hand it back to my mom quickly as possible. Finally, unable to withstand his mournful sobs, I set the laptop down and headed to the kitchen for his bottle. Maybe a little nightcap is all he needs, I mused. Maybe a few kisses on his forehead too.

As I headed through his door, his calculated cries immediately shut off, and I chuckled as I picked him up and brushed his tears away with my fingertips, carrying him over to the rocking chair across the room. I sat and rocked him in the dark, humming "Hush Little Baby" quietly in his ear. The crack of light from the doorway etched an outline of the left side of his face, with the right side nestled down close to my chest. He sucked down the milk gratefully as I whispered love into his eyelashes, stippling kisses across his warm brow and deliciously chunky cheeks. I then intentionally willed myself to soak all of this fleetingness in, so as to never forget what it feels like -- in this right-here, right-now moment -- to embrace my sleepy one-year-old son in my arms. As I whispered, "Caleb, I love you," he looked away at the open doorway and teasingly responded with "Huh-uh," his usual game when he is nursing and playing indifferent.

After several more of these teases, I began to understand he was really telling me something. "You love me, don't you, Caleb? You love your mama." He looked at me then, and instead of his teasing response, he tried to answer with a gurgling, sputtering mesh of sounds, mouth still attached to the bottle. "Yes, you love your mama, don't you?" Again, the same earnest jumble of non-words and the same serious expression. We went back and forth like this for several minutes, and then he pulled his blanket up, and I understood this to mean he loves his "nigh-nigh" too. "Yes, you love your nigh-nigh, too; you love your nigh-nigh and your mama." Again, he responded not with his little game, but with an earnestness of noises that assured me beyond all doubt that he understood what I was saying. When he finished his bottle, I craddled him above his crib and sang our nightly prayer song to him. While I sang, even in the darkness, I could see his round cheeks spring up over his chubby little smile. I kissed his brow one last time before laying him in his crib, and he went down without so much as a peep. Blessed sweetness. These are the moments...