driving north on a frosty day / the everything, the all.

two days after christmas, we hopped in the car with my dad and christy and drove north to hudson, a dreamboat of a town perched two hours up the river from new york city. it was a day for window shopping and gallery hopping, sipping bottomless coffee and poking our way through dusty antiques. we hoped to find benches for our farm table, but found mozart's violin concerto in d on vinyl instead. we lunched at mexican radio and warmed our frosty fingers with toddies at the governor's tavern before the drive home, marveling all the while at hudson's good bones — queen anne mansions, stained glass windows, victorian turrets, a patchwork of paint colors, patterned shingles, overhanging eaves — and how lively the streets must be in summer. no doubt, it's a place to come back to. 

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and something no photograph could ever manage to capture: they drove from south carolina to new york on a tuesday, so that i can rock my baby in my grandmother's rocking chair, the very one i was rocked in thirty years ago. they came bearing coffee beans and homemade butter cookies, a lamp for our loft and a sweater for baby the color of toffee with small wooden buttons.

it's a staggering love, the love of parents. the giving of selves so purely, so entirely, over and over and over.

i want my motherhood to be a testament of my love. i want my children to know i belong to them. i need them to see me see them. even now, i rock this baby in the dark of night — our floorboards alight with starshine, in this chair that's traveled one thousand miles, where we'll learn to nurse and learn each other — whispering, we will do the same for you.