I’m standing in a dark room, surrounded by odd furniture, loved and lost by generations past. A light green bassinet hovers in my peripheral vision, ruffled and with a wide hood, like the old baby carriage I pushed as a child.
A knock rings across the room, emanating from a dark wooden door somewhere in the distance. I reach it in a few steps and pull it open to reveal an old friend. It’s been years since we last spoke, but I don’t ask what she is doing here on this dark, uneasy night. “We’re coming,” she says quietly, as if to herself.
“Not now,” I reply, but open the door wider to allow her entry. A happy ambiance enters the room with her, and I welcome it, something in me lightening in her presence. We speak briefly, but I don’t know what we said. I turn to glance at the green bassinet, and she’s gone, fading into the shadowy corners of the room.
A noise sounds from the bassinet, and I return to it, passing a row of small cradles as I go. I reach the bassinet and lift out a baby, small enough to be light in my arms but old enough to wrap his arms tightly around my neck.
I feel him clutching me, his little hands heavy against the top of my back. He holds on tightly, needing the safety of my embrace. I hold him back and it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Such warmth, such comfort. It is everything I’ve ever wanted, although I never knew I was searching for it.
I give him a small squeeze and lean forward, lowering him into his bassinet. Something loud, and then -
I wake up, snuggled between the warm blankets of the bed in our New York City apartment. The clanging of never-ending construction drifts through the open window and a slight, seemingly eternal hangover hovers behind my eyes.
It would be a few days before I told my husband I thought we were ready for a baby. A few months until our New York apartment turned into a house in the suburbs. And just under a year before our little boy was born.
He turned two this week, and I cannot believe how fast the time went. He recently became a big brother and even more recently started potty training. I’m exhausted, but I am so happy and so proud of the little guy he is becoming.
We read books and sing quiet songs at bedtime. His favorite is “Once Upon a Dream,” from a Disney movie I cannot remember. It is the magic song that’s never failed to put him to sleep since he was a baby.
Sometimes, as we sit rocking and singing this quiet serenade, I remember the dream I had so long ago, in a different life. I think of how he is my dream come true in so many ways and how this old love song, originally sung by a prince to his princess, has become our own.
Happy birthday, baby James. Keep smiling, growing, and being everything you are :)
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