Rock On

She fell asleep in my arms tonight for the first time in ages.

She’s three now, so too busy for cuddles with her momma most of the time. But today she was fighting a bit of a flu bug and was extra clingy and I scooped her up into my lap and we sat in the gliding rocking chair and swished back and forth until her eyes grew heavy and her breathing followed suit. Her soft cheeks were smushed against my chest so she looked just like she did as a chubby baby, her mouth open and dreaming.

I rocked and rocked and was taken back to the very first time I rocked a baby in that chair: a fumbling new mom to my now seven year-old daughter, unsure about feedings and wakings, deliriously exhausted, sitting dumbstruck in that same chair, rocking back and forth, looking into her tiny face. The years in that chair are mostly a fogged-up blur. I was so tired that my bones and brain ached, but that chair rocked through many nights with me slumped in it, a babe in my arms. And those babies grew and grew into fierce, beautiful and lovely little girls who make a huge racket and push me to the limits of my sanity and also past the limits of my love, into something deeper than I knew could exist.

How many times has that chair rocked? A thousand? Ten million? I don’t know. I was too tired to count.

But tonight it rocked a few more times and I held my girl in my arms and felt the weight of her warm body and also of the years that have passed so quickly.