One Of A Kind

I was sitting here at the computer desk and Bean walks in. She says "hey mama can I go get one of my pumpkin candies to eat?" I say sure and keep working away here at the beast. A few minutes later she comes up, with s few sugar crystals around her lips and she says "here Mama", I look and she is holding up this tiny orange pumpkin for me. She just stood there, holding that pumkin aloft and smiling at me. The light from the window was bright and diffused and lighting her face up like an Angel's. I looked at her and then the entirety of my love for her sort of flooded through me. I saw her for what she is and I realized how very deeply she has wound her way into my heart. This is nothing new really , I did know these things in almost the first minute I held her, but sometimes you get a flash and you just KNOW more than other times. It's like we walk around with this buffering system on because otherwise our love for our children would blind us.
So. I accepted that pumpkin and I pulled her up onto my lap and I curled her up and I hugged her and smelled her hair. I told her that I loved her. LOVED HER. I think she felt that moment too because she said "whoo! Gosh Mama am I the only one that you love?" I told her that no, she was not the only one that I loved that I was lucky enough to have many people that I loved but that my love for her was different, that it was one of a kind. She asked me how. I told her that my love for her was fierce. She wanted to know what that meant. I said fierce love is bright and bold, strong and big and can't be lost or broken, that it was the closest thing to magic that I could do.
"Whooo!" she said.



*"whooo!" =the thing that Ev says when she is overwhelmed with emotions- good ones. It always has been, I will know that I am in trouble when as a teen, she looks at a boy and a small "whoo!" slips out.