Her hiccups rise and fall against my chest within the limitlessness of a happy day. A peaceful day. A day stacked upon similar days in sequence for the first time ever. A day in which the light at the end of the tunnel shines around the bend somewhere. Not quite in focus but spilling through cracks in walls. Somewhere. Someday. Soon. Ish.
She nuzzled at my breast today. Slid down and licked through my shirt until I offered her that which she was after and she latched, sucked three times before falling asleep. There she stayed for seconds turned minutes while I soaked in the sweetness of feeling like a “normal” mother. The tubes and wires, monitors and machines all melt away in rare moments like these, perhaps providing a peak at our future.
One of my and Xavier’s new favorite past times is to talk about all the things he’ll teach Nova someday and all the places we’ll go when* she comes home. We’ll go to the beach and the zoo and the museums, all of them, just like we did when he was little. But only in the summer because if he’s in school then it’s not fair and that’s why we don’t go much anymore, anyway. He wants to see her skateboard (once she can walk. Of course) and he’ll teach her to draw awesomely (because he’s an artist. duh.) and maybe when she’s bigger but still small she can tell him stories and he’ll write them down and draw the pictures just like we did before he could write (my favorite outgrown occurrence) . Arm pit farts, slurping noodles, baseball games and sandcastles. He will be her great protector and she will adore him with an affinity he has never seen. (I was a baby sister once.)
And I have visions of plainly picturesque days of the four of us (with a spattering of our angel’s dust) doing the most magically mundane things. These are my dreams: To walk to school with one child in a sling and the other by the hand. To run down stairs to swap a load of laundry and bolt back up before the boy or the dog make the girl cry. To burst in on said scene to see girl giggling instead. To sit on the sofa on a Sunday while my husband watches football and do nothing on a Saturday morning but sleep with them by my side. May I have my dreams?
Somewhere. Someday. Soon. Ish.
*not if