There is no mother of older children who I have not heard say “it seems to me that it was yesterday that I had my children in my arms.” And yes, it seems like yesterday to me too. In fact, the little girl is two years old and I swear to you that the feeling of wanting to cradle her is such that sometimes the nostalgia invades me to know that those moments will not return.
That phrase that I heard for the first time in the hospital, from a nurse’s mouth, also echoes in my mind, and that later became a continuous string that relatives, friends and strangers repeated to me : “don’t hold her so much in your arms because she is leaving to get used to “.
She got used to it, and so did I
Maybe yes, he may have gotten used to it, and in doing so, we were both happy. She for feeling the overflowing love of her mother, and I for feeling her small body in my arms and her smell, the one that sometimes appears suddenly and makes me stick to her neck in fear of never feeling it again .
And he got used to it, and every time he needed his mother, he had my arms. And every time the thermometer began to warn that a virus was haunting the environment, he decided that his favorite refuge was that and he did not want to release it . And I was happy, because despite how sacrificed it can be, despite the worry, despite the “thousands of pending things to do” that were piling up in my head, I knew that would happen, and that in some Now my arms would never be his favorite place in the world again and I would miss him.
They were all right, but there is something that they did not warn me: she got used to it, but I got used to it more, and now that I am living the beginning of her independence, I miss it a lot. So the unsolicited advice that I give to mothers of babies who still want arms: always keep them wide open for them, take them many times and for a long time, because much to our regret they get unaccustomed easily, but you don’t.
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