Above all these is love

The room is high above New York City, high above the whirl of Sparklecorn. We are curled into couch corners, shoes off, guards down. Nate scatters business cards that cover the coffee table to the far corners of the room. "Uh oh. Uh oh. Uh oh." An uh oh for each card flung. She is worried that the windows are open, maybe three inches, so far above the city and I joke about our own tears in heaven, but she is serious and it makes me love her more. She had a career in television, she has big news, she has glossy black hair and magnetic poise and a smile that warms you.

There are so many women here with smiles that warm.

She tells me that I changed her mind about something, with my words, and I swallow the lump in my throat. There are a hundred women below me, dancing, sleeping, talking, thinking, to whom I could say the same. The power we channel, collectively, us here in this enormous hotel with its pathetically inadequate elevators, stuns me silent. I am a part of that. I am a part of that. I am a part of that.

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Times Square pulses around us, people push past. We pause for pictures and I smile, though I hate to be in pictures and I want to keep talking to her. She has a large presence, a wide smile, crazy curly hair. The talk turns to babies, to doneness. I wish someone could inject me with that, I tell her, that done feeling, some drug that would numb the longing for something I already have, the sadness. She gets it. She gets me, right there in the middle of Broadway.

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She leans in and continues her story. I listen, riveted, the enormous pizza parlor around us forgotten, my hand wrapped around the stem of my wine glass. For a moment, I panic, who am I to hear this, how is she trusting me with these pieces of her heart, cupped in her hand and offered for my scrutiny? I exhale because I know, I have trusted her too. I have placed my most vulnerable moments on the table in front of her, right here on this blip of a story in space, and she has responded with a hug, with giggles in a hotel room, with love.

***********************************

The light in the hallway is yellow-orange and harsh. I absolutely refuse to be tired. Nate slept a pitiful two hours on the red eye the night before, clinging sweaty and on edge, to my chest, and I slept not at all. He slumbers now behind the door at my back, melted into the small crib mattress, a pancake baby, so grateful for the quiet and the softness beneath him and the dark. I should sleep, but I will not. Not with her beside me. This woman in her pajamas who is leaving tomorrow. Whom I see once a year and adore from afar the other 364 days. I want to pin her to my side with permanent quilt stitches. I want to talk hair (oh her beautiful hair, so like my daughter's challenging locks.) I want to talk life. I want to talk forever.

Across from me, our feet nearly touching, another woman sits. We have just met for the first time. We have known each other for a year. She is one of those rare souls that you meet and you nod and you know. Friend. No, more. Heart-sister.

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I stand in line, Kari beside me, gorgeous gala art work around me, and wait my turn to meet her and let her paint a phrase that defines me on my arm. My phrase came to me at once, but as I near her, it feels trite and cheesy on my tongue and I blush with uncertainty.

Can I actually say that? Me? Here. Surrounded by women who have dreamed so much bigger, accomplished so much more. To her. She has defined beauty in a book. She radiates it in person. I can not define her, but Britt did.

What should I paint? she asks me and waits, brush poised.

Perfectly happy, I answer and she nods as if I have the right to that phrase. I wear it the entire next day, though I look like a fool who hasn't washed her arm. I want to see it when I look down.

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She leans against the wall outside of security, waiting patiently for us. She has rearranged her evening, left her sleeping children to collect Nate and I, so that my children can also sleep. She is good to me like that. New York still sits on my shoulders and holds my heart in its fist. She senses the differentness in me and lets me talk all the way home with only nods and gentle prods. She is my friend in this strange energy that I can't shake and she will be my friend tomorrow at camp drop off, at the playground, as I settle back into my maples and sunshine and tantrums and flip flops life.

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They are sleeping when I arrive. I should sleep soundly, but I am too impatient for six a.m. and their voices and their arms and their news.

His precious spoon ladle lays across his bed, forgotten. He pwepwed AND peepeed in the potty for Kelsy. She has an owie on her arm. She made me a card at camp. It says, I love my mommy, in her unsteady scrawl. He caught a beetle. They picked peaches. Daddy got them ice cream.

It is quiet here.
There are lunches to be packed and loads to be washed and dogs to be fed and butts to be wiped.
No one is excited to meet me.
There are no parties to attend.
My phone is silent. My one text today about coop registration.

I know there is more to life than this. There is more to my life than this. I touched it and tasted it for three days. I watched woman shine. Authors. Speakers. Business woman. Marketers. Entrepreneurs. Publishers. Experts. And they are mothers too. But this time is so brief, this baby time, and they are all babies still, and there are dirty lake beaches to explore and playground to conquer and fairies to hunt and kisses to dole and naps to take and little hands to hold.

I am home.
I am so loved.
And I am perfectly happy.