I wrote before that this kind of full-body grief is like being punched in the stomach.
You know what else is like being punched in the stomach?
Love.
The record producer and his wife across the hall from the workroom have a little girl, Elizabeth.
This was nice.
Wow.
Besides being just about the best baby EVER, I find myself being super protective of her. She just turned one in April and has been walking and trying to talk for a while. So I walk her around the neighborhood and help out when I can.
So she is starting to get into things here and there and today I helped Mary, her mother, clean a cut on her finger from a pair of scissors. Elizabeth wasn’t happy about it, but she stood still while I talked to her and cleaned it out and put a bandage on it. She still wasn’t thrilled, but stopped fussing and met my eye solidly the entire time. When we were done and she smiled and started dancing.
My little heart just sang.
It is odd to feel so strongly about a child who isn’t yours, but there you go: It takes a village and all that…
Here is a pic of us when I was best man at her parents’ wedding:
Now this, THIS will brighten your day!
They came over and got me (I had been in pretty bad shape for a while – you can see my face and how beat up it was from all of the crying and emotional stress lately) and I was best man and head-baby-wrangler for the afternoon.
Wow. You have to remember what makes your life really sing sometimes.