I’ve been known to wax poetic about Jackie before. It’s cheesy, I know. But it’s also with good reason. She’s the one of the best things that ever happened to me. Knowing her has explained other emotions that previously eluded me. Namely, the feeling of absolute despair when the person you love is hurting and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. The realization that loving someone this much, can occasionally make it hard to breathe. How unfathomable letting go is. The importance of savoring moments and milestones. Jackie’s birth and the subsequent years that followed, have been a faith-changing sort of experience. I just have no other means of reconciling the fact that she’s had some extraordinarily close calls and yet, she is still here.
During last week’s vacation at the beach, people were calling shotgun on the baby. Have I mentioned how cute she is? Internet, she could slay the hearts of millions. Or, in the case of our family, all 27 of us. Still, there were times when you could tell she was just so over being passed around. She’d get randomly fussy, bending herself in half to lean far, far away from whoever was holding her at the time. Whenever this happened, I’d grab her and walk away from the crowd. Without fail, as I held her close and whispered into her ear, she’d settle down.
It made me strangely proud. So little of what goes on in her head is unknown, but the way she nestled in reassured me that for all of that unknown other, she still knows who loves her. She knows me.
The photo above was snapped as we were hanging out on the beach. I’d just popped my head around the corner of the stroller to say hello, and there it was: her perfect, broken smile. We spent the next few minutes repeating this little game, one that had her face lighting up and my heart exploding in the same infinitesimal moment.
