Forget Me Not.

Her emerald green crinoline-and-sequin dress billows around her as she kneels over the water, her glittering tiara tucked in between the silky strands of honey brown hair falling in waves around her face. She has his eyes, my eyelashes. His cheeks, my mouth. My temper, his toes.

Every day, I fall in love with her all over again.

It began the moment she existed, a life growing inside me where none was meant to grow again. When she came screaming into the world, ahead of schedule and angry at the affront, my husband welcomed her to the world while I had to wait still longer. Lonely and tired, we gazed at each other for days in the hospital. She watched me as though she already knew that I would be her greatest challenger and her greatest champion, two deep pools of emotion betraying a future neither of us yet knew.

She is what every mother dreams. She has endured what every mother fears.

So much has changed since that moment when I leveled their world with simple words. She is no longer the little girl with golden brown curls, screaming because she could not find the words. Instead of asking why he can’t just slide down from heaven, she asks why she can’t have someone at all. She asks to wear my ring on her wedding day and plans for her brother to walk her down the aisle because no one else will stand for her. She craves the stories that no one will tell and she disappears into books the way I loved to. She dances freely in the sunlight, finding joy in every creature she finds. She is spellbound by flowers and the death of creatures great and small are curiousities. As we lay flowers on the earth together, I fear a body in the ground and she is tormented by a body burned.

Today another is left to stumble forward with her own little girl. Watching my own little girl play with the water, I remember wondering as I watched her play on the edge of the water on a day when a door closed forever.

What now?

I hope I fall in love all over again. Every day.