A second line

   It all starts with a second line. Your heart starts racing, your mind goes blank, then crashes into a million things you never worried about before, and you know never will stop. You feel slightly dizzy and your palms get sweaty. Your insides get excited and nervous all at once. You share it with your most loved ones. Your belly begins to ache.You get tired, sick and sometimes sad. Your belly slowly grows. And then like a tiny trapped butterfly a tickle comes from inside. The next day another flutter. The flutters turn into kicks. Soon your tummy is too big, that every movement hurts. Until the day you struggle through so much pain, fear, anxiety, and hope.

  Then all at that moment. The world stops. The people buzzing around you blur. And they're all you can see. Two tiny swollen eyes trying to see for the first time, on a tiny wrinkled face. All you feel is pure love. There is nothing in this world comparable. The small fingers hold tight to yours. The sweet smell of their soft skin. All you want is to hold them like this forever, regardless of the labor you just went through. 

   The nights grow into each other as the sleeplessness of constantly tending to every need. Every stir, every cry, every diaper and feeding. These days and nights feel like the end. The pain of lack of sleep leaves you feeling desperate, and at times hopeless. That tiny life keeping you going, even when you didn't think you could. But then the nights and days return to some version of normal. You begin to catch more sleep. But then you see it one day. They rolled over. And it floods your heart with joy and sadness. Soon will be sitting, crawling, walking, running. The baby bubbles and spits slowly evolve into a word and then another. Then those words become sentences, and those turn into fantastic conversations of toddler randomness. Seasons slowly pass. Still slower than how fast they grow. Soon the onsies are packed and gone replaced with normal shirts. The pants no longer fit. They  need shoes they can walk in. 

   Then it happens and the last bit of them being an infant is abandoned for underpants. They aren't a baby any more.Your heart aches. It is happening all too fast. They start a collection of bumps, bruises and scrapes as they better understand their bodies and the explorable world around them. Messes in the pet water and food. Mud pies in the back yards. Rain puddles to splash in. Everything in this world a wonder and a need for them to experience. Watching them grow before your eyes, helpless in keeping them little.

    The first day of Kindergarten, they smile and wave as they walk in without you. The first time in five years where they will depend on a stranger to teach and protect them. Tears sitting in your eyes screaming to be let out, your heart protesting the smile on your face and the wave in your hand. You watch every step they take into the school until you can no longer see them and you just want to run up to them grab them and take them home. Make the little years stay, but you know you can't.

   The days get easier letting them go. Because you know you will see them later. Homework piles around you. Stuff to be done, papers already graded and sent back home. The school year ends and you sigh a sigh of relief you get to be with them more again but, they're different. They are older. You spend every day of the summer with them. Soaking them in. Dancing in the rain, drawing chalk on the ground, learning to ride a bike or cuddling watching a movie. But its over too soon and school begins again. 

   One day it happens. The school days blend together, the summers shorten every year, as they grow taller. They go from wanting toys to more expensive things. They start worrying about what other people think of them. Your cute nonsense conversations grow into more sophisticated ones then taper of into grunts, yes', no's, wants and complaints. You pray everyday you are doing the best you can to teach them right. They begin to act different as they find themselves. They make good choices and bad choices.  No matter their mistakes. No matter how many times they break your heart. Still at the end of the day, you peak in on them as the sleep in their bed, and still see that sweet face from years before. And you can feel it, you love them more each day than the one before.

   Then you find yourself surrounded by strangers. Other parents, other siblings. There they are, there with all of their classmates. All dressed alike, caps and all. Tears of joy and sadness sit quiet waiting behind your lids. You are filled with so much happiness and pride on how far they have come. So sad that this part is now over. The years going by faster and faster and there is no signs of slowing. 

   They pack and leave for college, or to move into their very first apartment. You want to hold onto them and never let go. But you know they have to go. You see them rarely. They are so busy at school, or work. Growing into a functioning adult. Then they bring someone home and it's never who you would have thought, but once you see it in their eyes you know it's perfect. Later you see them in that isle, gazing into their loves eyes and you cry inside. Amazed at this wonderful person you not only made but sculpted.

   Then it ends and begins.Some time later with a phone call, or dinner about a second line.