Baby

Molly's feet smell. They have a smelly foot smell that I can't get enough of. I bury my nose, beneath her toes, and she curls her foot around it.
When I am in the kitchen, standing at the stove, cooking, she will wrap her arms around my leg and squeeze hug me so tightly. I  feel her love. I feel her being. 
When we are sleeping together, she strokes my arm, and my neck, and jaw. I hear her breath. I am overwhelmed with love for her. I look at her face, and think, of course that is what you look like. I knew you would look like this. I knew before you were born.
I looked at her yesterday, seated in her highchair, eating her breakfast. She looked so long. She looked like a kid. The baby, disappearing within her.  Her cry seems older. Her laughter, more grown up. The little girl, emerging.
I had my tubes tied when I had Molly. As soon as Molly was placed in my arms, after the whole procedure, I felt panicked. I felt that I had just done something that I could never undo. It was so final, closing a chapter of a time in my life.
I was born to have babies. It was a feeling I had since I was a little girl. I remember getting up from the dinner table, when I was five or six years old, because I "heard my baby crying". I had her in a small wooden crib in my bedroom, at the foot of my bed. The crib had a picture of a baby deer on it. I had clothing for my baby, and bottles. Little plastic bowls, with permanent meals of peas and carrots in them. A high chair, and a stroller. Small blankets, and toys. I tried to be the best Mommy I could to my baby. She always smiled back at me.
 The urge to have a baby of my own has propelled me through my entire life. I always knew I would be a mother. I waited for the day, patiently.
The day I terminated the possibility of ever having another baby, is something that I still go around in my head about. I don't want another six year old. Not even a little. But a baby. Oh God..they are amazing. Warm, helpless, miniature people. Molly cannot have a conversation with me, but our communication transcends words.
It is love. It is trust.
I am in awe of it.