Holding Her World

Such a good baby, she thought. The white outfit was laid out, ready to be slid over his head and she did so. A diaper was pinned on and tiny socks slipped over his feet. She picked his head up gently and slipped the blue bonnet on, tying it loosely under his chin. So quiet and uncomplaining, he was a good baby, she whispered. Nestled in her arms, she carried him up to the front of the room. There she placed him in the tiny, velvet-lined white casket and thought what a small container, to be holding her whole world.

aw, man... wrenching.

Wow, Sail, that about killed me. Just heartbreakingly perfect.

I'm not quite sure where that one came from. My children are grown, now, so the nightmares of this kind of thing are long past. Still, it just wanted to come out. Fear can be, even decades later, a powerful motivator.

Sail, I remember sitting in a North London park with Jo, aged about two months, talking to a woman with a newborn son. Healthy little guy, chubby, smiling, very mellow.

She stopped coming to the park after a few weeks and I found out he'd had a stroke, and died, aged 6 weeks. She had high blood pressure, her whole family did, her husband did - they were all Lebanese, both sides of the family. Never thought to check the baby for it.

Both Sail's and erika's are amazing.

I'm glad I didn't know babies could have strokes, I had enough nightmares when my babies were small. Poor woman.

Sail, that was an *amazing* piece. I had to walk away from my desk and sniffle a bit.

And once I got done sniffling ...

It's not the usual sort of place someone would keep hopes, dreams, and fancies. Some people might write those things down in a book with a pretty picture on the cover, or bound in velvet; a new page for every wish. Still others have hope chests, or boxes; a rainy-day activity, sorting through keepsakes from the past, or icons for future memories.

One fuzzy ear sticking up, the second flopped over one shiny black eye, fangs just peeping over his dapper bow tie. While I sleep, he whispers my hopes and dreams back to me in a voice only I can hear.

CLOVIS!

Sail, that was, quite literally, the only case of a baby having a stroke that I've ever heard of. Never before or since.

To Have and...

When it was over—the sweatyslick movement of skin sliding across skin and a hand or a tongue or was that a shoulder brushing against her body—she was empty and full all at once. His chest pillowed her head; her arm draped his waist. They twined together like satisfaction.

The scent of their bodies combined, a heady musk settling across them, saturating their pores. Later, she would cup her hair to her nose and inhale this moment again. Later, the memory of this would make her smile inconveniently in the middle of a meeting.

Not the sex. The holding.