A short one

Yesterday Cora and I had one of those days I know I will remember forever. We went to the arboretum and walked through the linked meadows and trails above the visitor's center. Brightly colored leaves littered the ground, and there were still enough of them in the trees to make everything look decorated for a party. It is so odd to have a walking child. Even though she still looks like a zombie, she is able to navigate around quite well. We jumped in piles of leaves and felt all the textured tree trunks and branches. We found a huge cedar tree and ducked under its bower of branches, studying a squirrel while it zipped and bounced above us. My favorite part of the day was when I put her on my shoulders and we ran down a hill to this beautiful yellow tree that literally looked dazzling in the distance. We raced across the meadow and she laughed the whole time. I held her lengthwise in my arms under the tree so she could look up at the contrast of yellow against blue sky, and we spun around while she just giggled and giggled. I swear, I don't mean to sound overly dramatic, but when I looked down at her lovely upturned face staring up at her new world, grinning ear to ear with five and a half new teeth peeking through, I found myself moved to tears. I was looking at everything through her eyes. It is like watching a door slowly open and seeing your child peer around it, starting their journey into childhood.

When we first found out I was pregnant, I took two tests consecutively. I felt like my heart was going to burst through my chest with excitement. We had to meet a friend for lunch out in Tacoma, a long drive from our house, and we held hands a lot of the way. I looked out the window and imagined this new life inside. I remember that I suddenly felt as if everything that I was looking at, our little baby was seeing, too. I felt like an important filter, as if I needed to record everything around me more carefully, more accurately. And then I remember this precise moment when I switched over from being myself to imagining that I was my child all grown up, sitting in the passenger seat listening to melancholy music on a Sunday. I will never be able to see everything exactly as Cora does. I can only imagine the wonder she must feel as her life unfolds before her a day at a time. I hope she will always have quiet days in meadows, will sit for long moments in the grass, a little pinprick in the middle of a frenetic world, while she pauses and thinks how big the sky is, how blue and how wide and how open.