Our third wedding anniversary is coming up, a week from today. A wonderful day, an occasion to celebrate. We probably won’t. What to do, where to go. Who to leave Dylan with. Money. Too many variables to consider. We’ll be together, at home, our comfortable place. It is number three. There will be so many more, as long as we respect the light, feed it, stoke it. As long as we remember we have this comfortable place to always come back to. I will cook, something special, at home. It’s where we belong right now, you know?

I will focus all my might on number three. Because next week also brings number two. Two years of being a fatherless daughter. Two years of missing the man who I need, still. Two years since the illness, two years since the sickness, two years since goodbye. The first year was numb. This year I have felt every bump. The novocaine is gone in year two. The pain is not. It is still dark in that space, the place he used to inhabit. All the light in my life couldn’t fill that empty space.

I have written his story a million times in my head, the story of the end. I’m writing it right now, always adding, always remembering. Maybe this year I will put it down. Maybe this year I will share it, for others. For myself. Next week I will try to write it out loud. Maybe it will be enough novocaine to get me to number three. And then maybe I will write it again.

-linking up with Just Write

I hear the unmistakable “thump” of girl hitting floor, and then a split second later, the wail. I dry my hands and hurry to her, ready to snuggle and soothe and kiss her bumps to make it all better, the magical healing power of mommy. She sits, waiting, her beautiful brown eyes pooled with tears and expectation and just a glimmer of mischief. The thump wasn’t so bad, the bump, imaginary. She does this sometimes, tests me, to see how fast I will come, how many kisses I will give, how long I will rub her back to quiet her hiccuping sobs. When it’s a real thump, she comes looking for me.

Sitting on the floor, rubbing the barely bump, I think about how easy it is now, to make her feel better. A few tears shed, a bruise, the occasional busted lip from her feet not being able to keep up with her heart. Even when we scold her, and the corners of her mouth turn down and her bottom lip starts to quiver, all it takes is a hug, some kisses, reassurances that we love her, love her, love her, and all is forgotten. Truthfully, this is one of my favorite things about being a mom: the ability to make her feel better, to take away her pain, to make her feel safe. To turn her pain into laughter. Mommy magic.

I don’t want to think ahead to when my magic no longer works. I don’t want to know that one day, my baby will hurt and be sad and feel pain that I cannot take away. I don’t want to accept that one day, she won’t be my baby. At some point, it will take more than a tickle and kiss to make the tears stop. I dread that day.

So, until then, I will kiss every bump. I will hurry to her when she cries, rub her back, wipe away her tears, and I will ignore the smile that plays on her lips when she calls for me. When she calls out for mommy to come and give her some magic, even when she doesn’t need it. I’m hoping, in the way that moms do when we know better but don’t want to know better, that all the times I kiss imaginary ouchies and put band aids on invisible boo boos will add to some kind of magic bank. And when the time comes that I’m not able to make her hurt go away, she can dip into it, and use it to soothe herself, to dry her own tears and heal her own pain. And one day, she’ll use some of that magic on her own baby. Until she figures out how to make her own. I hope.

linking up with Heather of the EO and Just Write