Fairy Dust and Race Cars...

The moments of my day have changed dramatically in the past few months.  I couldn't help but to realize this as I sat, with a small girl looking attentively at my activity, paintbrush in hand.  The small girl watched as I dipped the brush in a selected color and rubbed it carefully onto a designated spot.  Just so.  Every now and then, she would break into a joyful chattering of delight--much like the sound of a baby pterodactyl.  I would stop, smile on face...beaming at the little bundle on my left leg...and then, continue painting.

What was I painting you ask??

THIS.

The idea was inspired as a reinforced box appeared in my car after my husband's office moved to a new location.  The box was just perfect and my little miss's brothers zoomed her around in it for over an hour before I saw, in my mind's eye, what it really was.  Her first car.

I imagine her tearing through town...a gleam in her eye.

And the most wonderful part of it all...the most magical part...is that I get to pretend.  With her.  Because she is here.

When you have lost a baby.  Or babies as is the case with me...  You know how precious that reality is.  To have the option of pretending.

In the depths of loss, there is no pretending.  Anything.  You can't pretend your baby is here.  You don't get to fill your hours juggling activities.  The hours tick slowly on.  Without end.  You lose track of days.  Months.  Even years. 

The painful reality is so stark, it leaves no room for imagination.  For silliness.

I remember being silly.  I remember being creative.  I remember not knowing that I didn't know.

I found a picture of the pregnant belly that contained my twins on my cell phone yesterday.  Honestly, I am pretty sure I took it at this same time of the year three years ago.  It was what I looked like right before they were gone.  I took that photo and sent it to my husbands phone right before I set off to teach a psychology class at the University.  I remembered it...because it was the last one I took that year.  

As I painted the little car for my rainbow baby girl, I thought about the fact that I never got to do anything for my twins.  Maybe that's the part that hurts the most.  I didn't get to mother them.  I didn't get to show them how much I would have treasured them.

I held my little girl a little closer as that feeling crept over me, as it often does.  That feeling that knows all too well how lucky I am to have her here.  With me.  In my lap.

I know how fleeting this time is.  Because, even when you get to HAVE your baby in your lap, it's really only the blink of an eye before they are moving out, having their own lives.  Their own babies.
I know how precious these moments are.  The moments of shared smiles and silly box cars.  The moments of wakeful sleep and eager nursings.  The moments where you are the most important person in a child's world.

In a simple life moment, one of those moments that happens before you want it to, she will step out of her box car, and into the real world where I can not insure her safety, or her happiness.

I'll just have these pictures as a reminder of this joyful moment.  The moment wherein she was my baby.

And unlike her twin brothers, she got to be here with me.  Enjoying the blissful world of imagination.

She's here. 

I could never forget how lucky I am in that.