My favorite

Her little hand slips into mine. Her face, lit by the sun, turns up to me. "Mama?"

I smile back down at her, wondering what's on her mind. "Yes?" 

"You're my favorite mama ever." 

In an instant, a thousand emotions descend.

Joy. It arrives first, my heart bursting with beauty of this moment. The day is ordinary, but this little girl is not. She is born from a thousand heartaches, and she is here, with me, right now.  She is everything I hoped for, and she is so much more.

Nostalgia. I flash back to an earlier time I heard words such as these.  I am standing in my childhood home, another ordinary day.  My mom, as though it was an afterthought: "Did you know you're one of my favorite people?"

Grief. For all that my mom does not know. For the first steps, and the first words and the first days of school that she did not see. For the sudden knowledge that, if she was here, she would surely be saying to this beautiful girl of mine: "Did you know? Did you know that you are one of my favorite girls in the whole world?"  

Fear. Because what is given can be taken away. Because while the world holds indescribable beauty, it also carries incomprehensible pain. Because loss still simmers beneath all I do. I've already lost one of my favorite people. What if I lose another?

The fear pushes against me. It rises up and through and around. Suddenly, it's all I see.

So I search for love.  The only antidote to fear I've ever known.

I look into my daughter's face, her eyes radiating with joy. I smell her sweet skin, and kiss her perfect nose. I wrap her in my arms and whisper, "You're my favorite, too."

And the whole world is right again.