Defining Moment #3

The birth of my daughter.

You are told that having a child “changes your whole life.” Everyone who has ever had a child tells you this, and it is trite. Yet when it happens to you, you realize there is no other way to say it.

You are now responsible for the life of another human being, one who can’t be left alone with a knuckle of rawhide while you run to the store; one who drinks whatever you put into your own body; one who looks into your eyes with more love than you’ve ever known or ever will know.

That shift in focus can be hard for some women. My constant vigilance, coupled with grief, began a six-year battle with insomnia. But my daughter—my daughter is my Pegasus. And each time she hits the Mt. Hippocrene of my body, I gush. She can do it with a smile, a lost tooth, a clever new word. She does it simply by waking each morning. And while I may, some mornings, look more like Medusa than Mommy, especially with each birthday, she still looks at me with that same love. (I hear that it all changes when she turns twelve, so I’m savoring these moments.)