Our endless numbered days...

Days like this day are like diamonds. They make me feel so desperate, and happy, and sad, all at the same time. Soon, Gillian and I will have fewer days like today together. Maybe our new baby will never have the chance to bask in the singularity of our love like Gillian has. We spent the day talking and reflecting and making and laughing. I held her tiny little hand and walked with her, everywhere. She wanted me to. I think of the power of her unbridled love and adoration for me, and I am so humbled by it's purity...and so heartbroken that it might ever change. The days keep rushing by, and sometimes I sit calmly at the Center observing and being-soaking this in, and others go by in some hazy jarble. I know the latter will be my great Regret in parenthood, no matter how I struggle to be fully present with my family. I just wonder where the time went? It seems eternities have passed since Gillian was my baby...since I watched her sleep for hours every day. And for a moment, as I watched her unabashedly flirting and laughing and dancing with her "new best friend"(-according to her-the Easter Bunny at Navy Pier (ah, the difference a year makes)), for that moment such a heaviness came over me I could barely catch my breath. How will I make the time for secret moments for Gillian when there is another child to steal my thoughts, and attention, and love? How do we make the new baby feel as special as we made our first feel? How do we cultivate enough love for two children and eachother to grow our garden?

I am aware that I am not the first parent on earth to feel a sense of near-panic when considering these things...our life is about to change forever, our hearts will stretch and pull to accomodate a new and burgeoning love again.


Where are you going, my little one, little one,
Where are you going, my baby, my own?
Turn around and you're two, turn around and you're four,
Turn around, you're a young girl going out of my door.
Turn around, turn around,
Turn around, you're a young girl going out of my door.

Where are you going, my little one, little one?
Dirndls and petticoats, where have you gone?
Turn around and you're tiny, turn around and you're grown,
Turn around, you're a young wife with babes of your own.
Turn around, turn around,
Turn around, you're a young wife with babes of your own.
-Harry Belafonte