I saw five babies today; one squirming in the bucket of a grocery cart, one screaming in a stroller, one gumming an ice cream cone; one asleep, strapped face-out against dad's chest, chin squished in glorious rolls, cherub legs dangling limp beneath a drool-draped onesie. The fifth baby was a memory, from a long ago trip to new york; myself single and entirely baby-free, watched a young mother nurse and rock her newborn to sleep in the sticky corner of a subway car beneath a caramel sweater, right there midst all the hub-bub. The baby cocooned into her mother's chest, fluttery breaths escaping every few minutes, and I felt a pang in my own; small, but something. And as I shuffled off the subway I carried it with me. Today, a lifetime later, I remembered that subway baby, and her barely breaths, I don't know why, maybe it had to do with the calendar flip and my own baby's birthday in six days, and the familiar jolt of another year gone by. Two years? 

Can I still call her the baby?

 I can't hold on to the past I am told, nor the future, there is peace only in between. Fly too close to the sun, Daedalus warned, and your wings will fail you, fly too close to the sea and you've lost your momentum. There's truth in the middle, I know this, and with most things I can grasp the balance, but when it comes to babies, the concept snakes like smoke through my fingers.

 Five Ways To Be Present, Eight Easy Tricks To Be In The Moment, Six Steps for Living in the Here-and-Now.

 But then I am in the basement sorting through boxes of old things and I find, buried deep, an envelope, mallory's first haircut, written on the seal, and I peek in to see the still soft wisps of honey-colored hair delicately splayed in the fold. I did this too, to my girls, though I'm not sure where I put their envelopes. My mother did, so I followed suit, a small memento to their babyhood, and here now, in the basement, a flashback to the hesitation–if I do this will you grow up faster? 

 I am not afraid of you growing older only of losing the depth of your beginning. For in those late nights, nose buried in the fur of your scalp, I uncovered my own grit, and sensed yours too. I knew you then. But as your limbs lengthen you become less familiar, a new freckle appears, a bruise, a scar, your eyes change color. Sometimes when I see you from a distance I see a faint glimpse of baby beneath your face; a gift, I tell myself, hold onto it.

 Do not cling, do not hold.

 But I still see your fists clinging to my t-shirt, my fingers tracing circles on your thighs as we rock next to the window and the moon gently lights the room and the tears slip silent onto my stained robe; I have never felt more weary or foggy or heavy; but I weep because I have never felt more at home.

 “Mom!” you say, dressed head to toe in hand-me-downs, a feather between your fingers, “it's a bird!”

 I'm here, I breathe as I pull a piece of dead grass from your braid. I want to hold you but you squirm away. 

 You will be two in six days and I will always be two places at once.