Where are the Words?

 Where are the words that I'm looking for?  That remarkably powerful feeling of pleasure mingled with pain that fills my chest with an ever deepening ache.  The feeling I have when watching my daughter restlessly sleep, eyes closed and whining when she doesn't feel me next to her, only to calm with the presence of a weight beside her.

 Where are the words?

"Love" must be what I'm looking for.

But it feels so different from any love before.

I wonder if the feeling a baby has for her mother compares.  I don't remember the days when I was so inextricably intertwined with my own mother.  When I depended on her for everything.  I hope that a baby knows this feeling.  But perhaps she can't, quite.  Since a baby has no comparison, knows nothing else.

I, as an adult, know so much else.  But now I have the incredible honor, the joy, the remarkable beauty of getting to know this love.  Sometimes I feel that I might just disappear in it all.  It's hard to imagine that my feelings will grow and change.

For now, I am letting myself be in awe, allowing myself to revel in the small moments of watching her sleep, holding her little hands, smoothing her soft hair, kissing her sweet cheeks.

Sleep, baby, sleep.