Chapter 6: Fable’s Sixth Month

Most treasured of all beautiful girls –

Half a year.  It has been half a year since that day you and I wrestled each other for so many endless hours, half a year since your selkie dreamling self was placed on my weary teary chest, half a year since we locked eyes and began to belong to each other.  It feels like minutes.  It feels like always.

At six months old, you are everything wonderful.  You delight in people – you smile at strangers and seek out the someones who seem to be having the darkest days for target practicing your soul-mending grin.  I love watching you light up faces, loving people in that wholly holy innocence and nearness to God that only the tiniest posses.  You delight in me, which is the best of all things – I am so honored to be the recipient of your gazing and cooing and earliest hard-won giggles.  The worst of our days are still by far the best of mine.

You adore your daddy.  I remember waiting for my daddy to get home from work, remember knowing he could do anything, remember the weightlessness of sleeping in his big strong daddy arms, and I love to watch you love yours.  The two of you snuggled up with a story, or wandering through the market, or sharing early morning secrets – I will carry these pictures with me until I am old, and you are grown, and your dad is no longer the hero of everything – although maybe still the hero of you, with the right mix of luck and love and pride.

You are so aware, and so contemplative – you crave nature and beauty and real things to see, and you waste no attention on screens or devices.  You are a curator of breezes and colors, of tree sways and neighborhood dogs – an observant collector of sights and smells and all that is real.  You choose touch, and closeness, and sleeping well snuggled.  You are happy to peacefully ride along on my back, napping at intervals and practicing greeting the world at eye level.

You are one of the most determined little souls I’ve met – my stubborn streak and your father’s love of perfection have met in you to birth stoic perseverance.  When you have a goal in mind, your attention span is mighty.  You will be a gale force wind, tiny beautiful girl.

Your eyes are still blue.

You roll now, and scoot, and you make good time – I’ve watched you travel 10 feet in a minute in pursuit of a ball or that darned enthusiastic snail.  Soon we will have to figure out how to protect this house from your determined little hands, or rather, how to protect you from it, or maybe a bit of both.

You love sweet potatoes.  You remain undecided about pears.

You are having a noteworthy love affair (an obsession?) with iced beverages, specifically those belonging to grown ups, specifically any grown up in whose lap you happen to be sitting.  I didn’t know your eyes could get as big as they do when a glass of iced tea or lemonade slips up past you, your little hands quaking with excitement, reaching with the most eager reverence.  Soon, tinsy girl.  So, so soon.

You think coughing, and really only coughing, is funny.  You almost (almost!  almost!) laugh.

Today, you sat up on your own while I counted to ten.  Tomorrow, I’ll count to twenty and you’ll be graduating college.  I used to think years were short, but nothing was ever as fast as these last few months with you.  It’s impossible that so many long, long nights equal the shortest six months of my life, but here we are.

We love nothing on this earth so much as you, tiny beautiful girl.  Bigger than the sky, wider than the world, deeper than the sea, taller than the stars.  I knew God before you, but I feel Him so differently now that you’re here.  I am so honored to spend my days trying to glimpse what you see and hand you what I know.  How I love you, tiny one, my very best girl.  How lucky I am to be your mama.

love.