wild weekend. flower show with brett, trent, and bella. even though we went at 4pm, it was still very crowded. and trent was being more pre-teen than usual. but the thing I hate most about going out to events like that is Other People. Other People are annoying, rude, stop in the middle of foot traffic to talk about what coffee to get, stop to talk about how their rhododendrons look nicer than these do, and look at you funny if you ask them to please excuse you as you attempt to roll a stroller around them. yeah, I know strollers are annoying at these events, but you know what? it's my only option. you, Other People, have slightly more options as you plop your giant quilted coat on the floor on top of your 15 bags full of useless information that will wind up in a landfill next to your moldy 15 foot pussywillows that you insist on not only purchasing at the flower show, but bringing aboard the train home. you have more options. so I won't apologize for my stroller.

and then I watched The Color Purple for the first time. yes, I realize it's been out for like 40 years and blah blah, but I never saw it. and I watched it alone with bella on sunday. then I watched Delores Claiborne on tbs. and then I had this awful epiphany that I'm sure every mother has had...that I probably had already with trent, too: I looked at her, dressed in her 5th outfit of the day due to diaper blowout madness, all drooling and smiles and farts, and knew that someday, someone would hurt her. someone is going to hurt this innocent baby. someone is going to break her heart, someone is going to ignore her, someone is going to threaten to punch her, and someone is going to betray her confidence. someone is going to talk behind her back, and someone is going to tell her something she doesn't want to hear. and there could be more hurt -- deeper hurt, things that I dare not even pretend to think about. and there is nothing I can do about it. as she giggled at me, looking to me to protect her from gravity and hunger, knowing nothing awful in the world other than a dirty diaper and an empty belly, I just had to cry for all the things that I will never be able to protect her from.

this is motherhood. and though I write it down today and it's still fresh enough in my memory to bring tears to my eyes today, I probably won't remember this day - not this specific day, not this specific time...not the way she looked in her pink sleeper, not the way she crinkled up her eyes or the exact babble that she spoke on the changing table. this piece of my life, this specific day in our lives, because it is so ordinary, will blend into the background and eventually it will no longer be available to call back to mind. I look at trent and I know I went through the same things, and I have glimpses of him, but it's all short clips in a too-short montage of his babyhood. and it makes me sad for her, and sad for him, and sad for myself.