November 11, 1998

This is a brand new fascination for babies. She never longed to have one until she found out she was going to have one. Then her nights were filled with dreams of strewn toys, small outfits, and shoes that seemed impossibly tiny for human feet.

Sure, she had contemplated motherhood once before, when she first fell in love. Until then it had been unthinkable. Then her heart softened some, a welcome feeling, and she thought now and then of a small life representing a love, a bond, a trust, n’er to be broken.

For a few years she didn’t think much about it, letting her career blossom, her life bloom, and then all of a sudden there was a baby to think of.

She could never picture him as an egg or an embryo. He was always a fully formed baby with flawless pink rubbery skin. She started buying diapers and toys when she was only two months along. Counting on a birth too much before month three was bad luck, well that’s what the TV always said, but she was willing to take her chances. If it was meant to happen it would, and if not she’d take it as a message. A message she hadn’t been good enough or smart enough to really have a baby--just then.

The baby is still so small. He doesn’t quite look like the little pink baby she dreamed of yet. He’ll be cuter when he can smile, or do something, or has some hair, or gets some colour in his cheeks she’s sure. But he’s hers so she’ll keep him and love him until then anyway.

What she loves best about this little boy, isn’t really him, but the reactions people have to him. How her mother is a new person, one she’s never seen before, when she’s grandmothering. She was too young to know the love her mother was giving her at that age; she sees now how it must have been, and loves her mother all the more because of it. Her father dotes on the baby, he can’t get enough. Oddly enough her younger brother is the same way. It’s like he’s grown up over night, gotten responsible, just to fill his new title of uncle.

Then there’s her fiancé, baby boy’s dad. It’s this she enjoys most, when he cuddles the baby close to his face and kisses him tenderly. He doesn’t act like some dads who are afraid the baby is going to break, instead his eyes roam over this tiny being memorizing it’s every line, each curve, each small appendage. Some days she fears he loves this little baby more than her. Then she’ll look into his eyes and see it was unfounded as he wraps his arms around her still swollen waist and kisses her as softly and lovingly as he kisses the baby.

He draws pictures of the baby when she’s not looking. Well he thinks he’s alone, but she is watching discreetly around the corner. He draws in charcoals, and inks, and pencils she’s brought home to spark his seemingly dormant talent. He draws the most love filled, beautiful expressions of art she has ever seen. He’s found his muse. He used to draw her, half covered in their sheets, but then work began to drain him. When he shows her these pictures she can see infinite pride in his eyes, for the baby, for her, for the life they have made together in this small, warm apartment. He’s never known life could be this good. She sees all this even in his eyes now as he briefly looks up while he sketches her and the baby.

He smiles alternately at them and the paper. He’s glowing. She’s glowing too, because she knows she’s had a hand in creating this happiness. For this she will be eternally grateful. Grateful that he let her into his life and at the same time made her happy.

He sets the sketchpad down and gently places the baby into his crib across the room then silently slips into bed beside her, resting his head on her chest. She lovingly strokes the hair away from his face, dropping tender kisses along his hairline, which has not yet begun to recede. She has not felt this calm or this utterly loved since five seconds ago when he looked up at her. That is the best thing. Every moment they spend together and apart is filled with this love, this bond. It’s always been this way. That’s why even though she broke the three-month rule the baby still came. He knew not to miss out on this love. He knew the caress of his father’s hands before he ever even left the comfort of his plush interior. He knew the kisses that were awaiting him were greater than the lure of anything else that could be waiting for him beyond.

They quietly and carefully make love for the first time since the baby. It hasn’t quite been much more than a month. The familiar feel of his hands on intimate skin leave her weak as always. Lying there together, exhausted, if they are very quiet they can hear the baby’s light breathing, like the murmur of their own hearts. Together they sleep, dreaming of one another, of their life that is already a dream come true.

He wakes up with the baby in the night and she feels his weight shift back into the bed. He already senses she is awake and lays the baby in her arms.

That is the picture she will forever hold of them in her mind. No matter how the baby ages from child to adult. No matter how gray they get in each other’s arms. She will always have that scene in her mind. At that moment she experienced something not everyone may have the chance to feel. She experienced total and utter perfection.