Like A Tattoo.

They say it goes by in the blink of an eye.

But what they don’t tell you is that even when you cherish every second, even when you are painfully aware of how quickly it’s passing, you still have to blink.

My second baby is asleep on my chest.

His tiny little body warm against mine. His breath against my skin. I breathe in as he breathes out, almost desperately, as if taking in enough of him could somehow make us one again, as if I could absorb this exact version of him and keep it somewhere inside me forever.

I listen to his little heart racing beneath his chest. I count his eyelashes. I trace every line of his tiny ear with my eyes. I watch the way his mouth falls open when he sleeps. The little sound he makes when he breathes. The almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest.

And I think,

Remember this. Don’t forget. Remember exactly how he feels. Don’t forget. Remember exactly how small he is. Don’t forget. Remember this weight on your chest. I want to swallow the moment whole. I want to ingest it.

To somehow store it inside my body so that ten years from now, twenty years from now, when he no longer fits against my chest and his voice has changed and his arms are too long to curl around mine, I can close my eyes and find this exact moment again.

How do I soak up a moment any more than this? How do I bask in it harder? How do I love it enough to make it stay?

I am literally nose to nose close. Breathing the same air that is passing through his tiny nostrils, and even that isn’t enough. Even this isn’t enough to stop time.

And then my firstborn comes running through the door. He has a story to tell me about school.

Something about space. The planets. Something he learnt that day that is, to him, the most important thing in the world.

And I sit there listening to him, smiling through the tears running down my cheeks, completely undone by the realisation that somehow we got here.

How did we get here? Wasn’t he just here?

Wasn’t I just sitting with his little body asleep on my chest? Wasn’t I staring at his eyelashes? Listening to his breathing? Trying desperately to memorise the weight of him?

But now he is five. Five. Five years old.

A whole little person with stories and questions and opinions and a mind of his own.

And all I did was, blink.

Maybe that’s the hardest part of loving children. You spend every day trying to be present. Trying to notice it all. Trying to hold every little thing close. And still, somehow, they grow right in front of you. You can love a moment with everything you have, and it will still leave.

Is that what motherhood is? Learning that you can’t hold on. You can only hold them.

Hold them while they sleep. Hold their tiny hands. Hold their faces in your palms. Hold their stories. Hold their laughter. Hold the weight of their little bodies for as long as they will let you. And when the moment passes, you hold the memory.

Because one day, the baby asleep on my chest will be a boy. And the boy running through the door telling me about the planets will be a man.

And I will give anything to go back to this exact ordinary, extraordinary day.

So here I am trying to memorise it.

Every breath. Every lash. Every tiny heartbeat. Every sound. Every inch of them. I desperately want to remember it all. I want to burn it into my skin. Like a tattoo that will never fade. 

And maybe that’s the cruellest thing about loving a moment this much: You can never love it enough to make it last.