Dear Wren,

It is 10PM on a random Wednesday in May. You will be five weeks old tomorrow. I am holding you wrapped up in a grey blanket that a good friend made for you. Your head is tucked up against my shoulder. Your little hands are balled up in fists up near your face. Your shoulders line up with mine. You’re tucked up in a ball with my hand under your rump. You are so small that your entire body is right there. From my breast to my shoulder with a heavy little head covered in fluff.

I sniff your head and almost inhale your hair. You smell amazing. I close my eyes and try to memorize this.

I know I won’t be able to. I’ve already lost the earliest moments and how you felt when you were just born. Every moment is overwritten by the intensity of the next. Every moment you are a new person, and so am I. We are growing together.

Your little hands. The way it looks like your fingers shouldn’t quite all fit onto them. The funny shaped newborn fingernails. Yours have a bit of dirt under them. I’m not sure how. I know that it refuses to wash off, and that I’m waiting until they’re long enough to snip them off with baby nail cutters.

Mundane details.

Your arms move and your body twists in a very particular way. You stare at me with an expression that is completely and uniquely your own. I have taken some videos, but I know from experience that those videos won’t show me what I see right now.

You see. When you were born I didn’t know you yet. But love came roaring in full force. Intense and crazy. Giddy. Glorious. Gleeful.

I look at you and I laugh with joy.

I look at your siblings that way, too. The way they are now. Today. The way they have grown to be.

And I try to memorize the details of them, too.

Life is so full. So full of moments to remember. Details to try to hold onto. Many of them will slip away, replaced by the newer things. The new giddiness. The new joy. The new shape of the love that you were born into.

I snug you close. I forget about trying to memorize things.

I can’t.

I’ll let them shape us instead. You and me. Our relationship. Who each of us will become tomorrow, and in the days and years to come.

Time’s a river. Each moment is a drop of water.

We’ll be floating along together for good long while.

❤ Mama