mother.

we walked for sweet crepes and a fistful of pink peonies that i arranged in a white pitcher. the weather was cold and rain, such is the stuff of new york in may, and we were in our cozies by three in the afternoon. words from my husband filled a page and small, dimpled hands mapped the cosmos of my face. and i was a mother on mother's day.

i always felt myself to be a mother, in the truest of ways. and so what a gift, this year, to be on this side of things. what a gift, to have arms full of my very own baby. what a gift, to receive counsel and inspiration and strength from the women i am walking alongside. what a gift, to have a husband who approaches fatherhood in the same way that he approaches marriage: work and play and so much joy. so. much. joy.

this is not lost on me. this will never be lost on me. 

there is not language that allows for what my motherhood means to me. there is only the warmth of coffee my husband hands to me in the hour just before morning and my baby's dewy sighs into my neck as i rock him by the light of the moon on wood floors that creak under the weight of my love for him. there is only the memory of a time when this version of my life felt so far away, so unlikely, so impossible. there is only the feel of hot tears falling to the thought that everything, everything, that ever happened, or didn't, added up to him. there is only the sound of amazement, carried on my own deep and thankful breath.