Two years

I woke up early this morning, just as the first grey daylight was starting to seep around the blinds. I was in Adriana's bed, having gone in to her in the night. We were both on our sides, facing each other, and I stayed very still, listening to her breathe, admiring the curve of her cheek, her tiny mouth, the arms clutching her hat to her chest. I thought of where I was two years ago. At this exact time, I was probably laboring in a hospital bed, scared and tired, just a few hours before her birth. And then I added three hours for the time difference of her being more in Virginia, and realized that it was exactly two years since she'd been born. At this exact time, I was watching her be cleaned up and examined by the pediatricians in the operating room, listening to her cry and crying myself. This morning, at the risk of waking her, I took her in my arms and pressed my lips to her forehead, remembering that first day in the hospital when we were finally in our room in the maternity ward together, holding her skin-to-skin with me under my nightgown, and I marveled then and now that she was my baby.