At big events, memorable occasions or even just regular ol' happy days I am not the one with the camera. I am not gifted enough to be able to soak up my surroundings and photographically document it at the same time; I guess I just feel like the picture could either never do the occasion justice or is not worth sacrificing a moment of the experience to begin with. At sweet times in my life I like to just sit back and savor the tastes, smells, feelings and images and just treasure the pictures in my mind. (So the moral of the story is I end up being the bum who borrows someone else's great shots.)
I feel like that has been the case with my blogging for the past month. About half a dozen times I have sacrificed a much-needed shower or cat nap to sit down and try to write about these past five weeks. But I have either been completely unable to locate any words that come close to depicting everything I have seen and experienced and felt, or, as is more often the case, a hungry cry or sociable coo from the other room leads me to abandon the computer in a happy heartbeat.
So I sit here now not really knowing what to say. I want to tell you about the night she was born, about the pain and exhilaration, the fear and the joy. I want to tell you about those first few nights, about the bone-numbing exhaustion that everyone tells you is coming though you never fully believe them until it does and the sheer wonder of sustaining a hungry little life with your own body. I want to tell you about how beautiful she is and how every day we change our minds about whose eyes she has and what color that fuzzy stuff on her head will turn out to be. I want to tell you about the deepest contentment and nostalgic intimacy that comes with sharing parenthood with the love of your life. I want to tell you about how terrified and humbled I am to be responsible for a human life anywhere in this world, much less in the corner of this fascinating planet that we find ourselves in now. I want to tell you how I felt when she smiled at me this morning - not an accidental gas smile but an open-mouthed, squinty-eyed, full faced I-love-you smile.
I want to tell you about all these things but I am not sure if the words even exist. If they do then I have been unable to find them. Hopefully soon I will regain enough misguided confidence to audaciously attempt to describe these things and all the other new undescribables that I suspect are in my future. But until then I am going to be a bum and just steal someone else's pictures again. Someone is calling me from the other room...
