Take one.
I am afraid that I will not remember what it's like to hear her breathing in the morning with lungs so small, with a body fragile and growing, completely reliant upon the food source that rests proudly above my rib cage. I am afraid that I won't remember what it's like to grow another being into being as a first radical act of embodiment every day and that my forgetfulness will be rooted in the lack of mouth nipple connection--an amnesia of clinging to one incarnation over another. I am afraid I will forget. How she set me free with this taking. And in forgetting I will know that I am missing something I cannot remember. Something that gave me my life by enabling me to give my life away.

Take two.
Why didn't anybody tell me I would be this tired? They tried. But there is no way to encapsulate the logic of this exhaustion in words.

Take three.
My brain is changing. I can feel neurotransmitters blazing new pathways with each unfolding hour as my levels of focus and distraction both increase and decrease depending on the environment. I used to be able to read and write and think for hours on end. Those days are over. Now my philosophical journeys take place in 30 second intervals, my sermons written at 4 a.m. in one full swoop. And then there is a bowl to fill, a coo to whisper over the crib, my own face in the mirror wondering where I have gone.

Take four.
She does something new. Like, in the last week, when she's waiting for breakfast, she has begun bowing in front of me, and i reciprocate so we touch the top of our skulls, as a salutation of sorts. This gesture between us, this love tap, alone, catapults me to the place where no prior heartbreak, failure or despairing matter in the slightest.

Take five.
The world is bleeding out of every effing orifice. Isn't there a better word than "violence" to describe what's going on here? What the hell was I thinking bringing a child into this world? Sometimes I wish I would have been knocked up on accident. Then I wouldn't feel so responsible for anything that happens to her. But does anyone ever really get knocked up on accident? And frankly I probably wouldn't feel any less responsible. What does it mean that if somebody hurt her I could see myself committing the very same atrocities i keep weeping about when they come on the news?

Take six.
She isn't yet 10 months old. And her two favorite phrases are thank you and bye-bye. Something tells me she already knows quite a bit about this life.

Take seven.
Too many redemptive things to count, things that reignite an innocence long lost to the confines of consciousness. Things like softness in blankets, simple harmonies in storybook rhymes. Like what happens to your own flesh when you take baths with baby skin and rubber duckies. The warranted forgiveness you find for the people who failed you early (despite their best efforts). The undeserved forgiveness you find for the people who failed you early (even though they never tried). Pink finds its way back to your soul without the cacophony of feminism slicing you every minute, because she looks like sheer possibility under and around whatever she wears and why on earth should that recognition be stuffed by gender logic of any kind? Your heart becomes the place where she rests her ear and that is a placement you and she both need to remember. The importance of tears in communicating what's needed. The importance of laughter in communicating what's holy. The importance of miscommunication in establishing good communication. How you have to fall down like 3000 times before you can stand. How other mothers are so full of pride and so full of shame that you'll never look at them the same. So much redemption; too much to count.

Take eight.
Things become too small or no longer necessary quicker than you can blink. Towels, spoons, a $175 swing, knitted hats no more. The storage material itself boggles the mind. Staring at a newborn onesie that fit for a week, I sob into my laundry basket, shedding my hope for a life where joy and loss are less entangled.

Take nine.
A single cry alerts me over the baby monitor that she is through napping. Is there another reverberation, another simple sound in all the earth that can bring me back to the present moment like this one? I am off to her, drawn into her. Showing up with complete ignorance and commitment in an attempt to attend to this creature, this creature who placed a love covenant around me (tighter than all the others), this creature who freed herself on the Spring Equinox by splitting me wide open.

Take ten.
In Latin, her name means "morning's first light." In Roman literature she is the Goddess of mythology. Aurora.