Thursday, June 5, 2014

The Delight of Her Face

The slope of her nose.  

 The dark lashes against her cheek. 

The perfect arc of her furrowed brow, intense with concentration.  

 The wispy, dark curls that spring loose from her tightly bound hair. 

The delicate outline of her lips puckered as she focuses.

 The long legs reaching for the sky as she swings on the playground.

The dimple in her elbow bare to the sun in summer short sleeves.  

All of these details I drink in as I watch her.  Uninhibited and unaware as she will never be again in her life.  Baby roundness still dominates her features while her limbs give away the slow fade from babyhood to childhood.

"Almost gone,"  the words whisper like a harbinger in my soul.  "Drink it in now," the warning continues, "before this moment, this phase, is irrevocably gone."

So I do, with greedy desperation.

I look and watch and soak in the incredible details of the baby face I still can't believe is my child, freeze-framing each moment in a futile effort to still the hands of time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Each of our mom hearts resonate with the ring of those tender words and the desire to put life on pause. Thankfully, mercifully, each unfolding season of our child's lives carries its own specialness. And then there's grandbabies to let us start all over again :-)!

Julie Lewis said...

lol... good point!