Tears

Liam bit his finger tonight while he was eating his pizza and he burst into tears.
He bawled just for a second, looking right at me, his little mouth open and downturned, his eyes squeezed shut, big crocodile tears streaming down his cheeks.
For just a flicker of a second, he looked absolutely exactly like the way he looked the moment I first saw him, lying on a little light-table, naked and afraid, with his little face scrunched up just that very same way.
I had to run around the table and hold him, even though his father was sitting right there. Love just pumped fiercely through my veins, I had to have him next to me, to feel the warmth of his flesh and to taste the salt of his tears on my mouth. On my way back to my seat, I fetched the little photo book that holds the pictures of his birth and found just the photo that the midwife had taken of him at that moment; I held it up so that he could see.
Then I sat back and flipped through the book, and something surprised me:
stoic, sturdy, concrete me, my eyes began to fill with tears. I was trying to tell Aoife what was happening in the pictures but I could not, my voice was choking and I was overcome with emotion. Somehow I had gone there, I had been taken back.
Then it dawned on me, of course.
Of course.
Tick, tock.
Six weeks to go.
The fragile time has begun in earnest. Be ready.