We all know how it goes -- the blissful parents' Facebook dispatch from the hospital delivery room: "We are so in love!"
But when I gave birth to my daughter, what I experienced felt less like love and more like awe. The two are related, of course, but with awe comes a deepened shade of fear and bewilderment: "I gave birth to this beautiful creature?" "I am the one who will raise her?"
I fell in love with her beneath a tree in our backyard. As we pulled into the driveway from the hospital, my husband -- in a moment of panicky insight -- suggested that she and I sit outside for a while before entering the house. He set us up with a camping chair and there, I fell in love. There, in the mild October sunshine, with my iced decaf coffee, with my baby wrapped in a pastel-rainbow-colored blanket knit by my mother-in-law, with my body still aching from her birth, and with the dog stomping leaves beside us, turning his head to steal a glance at this new little human. There, with the cinnamon scent of fall, with the soft breath flowing through my daughter's scrunched-up little nose like the wind that shook the newly-barren trees, with her tiny fists tight to her chest. There, she became mine. And I became hers, her mother.
Love is, in a sense, more intimate than awe -- it involves knowing another soul completely, even when you still don't know what their favorite food or song is, or even what their voice will sound like, what color their hair or eyes will be. The connection is eternal and mutual. It arrives suddenly, when we're open; when we feel safe and at home, when we're fearless.
The fear returned soon, as I tried to sleep for the first time outside the hospital. It took days, it seems, before I could trust myself to drift away from consciousness, to not be there to watch her breathe and be alive. To not be there to observe -- in awe -- the way she elevated her hands, fingers spread like a yogi's, as she slept on my chest; the way her Fred Flintstone feet flexed upward while she ate; the chomping sound she made at the end of a good yawn; the way her chubby arms -- what her dad called her "meat hooks" -- bent and swung at her sides like an excessively joyful drum major's. This awe, in a way, is sacred -- we gaze in wonder, with absolute reverence for the essential wholeness of another human being.
It is fragile, too, though. In time, my desire for sleep increased, eclipsing the fear and awe. The awe returns in waves now, as the love endures.
Meanwhile, the spot beneath this tree is sacred for me, too. Someday we may move from this house but never from this spot, as I carry it -- however cliché -- within my heart.