“On the night you were born,
the moon smiled with such wonder
that the stars peeked in to see you
and the night wind whispered,
“Life will never be the same.”
Because there had never been anyone like you…
ever in the world.
…
If the moon stays up until morning one day,
or a ladybug lands and decides to stay,
or a little bird sits at your window awhile,
it’s because they’re all hoping to see you smile…
For never before in story or rhyme
(not even once upon a time)
has the world ever known you, my friend,
and it never will, not ever again…”
An excerpt from the beautiful picturebook entitled, “On the Night You Were Born”, by Nancy Tillman.
This was the first bedtime story we read to our daughter, the first night that we brought her home from the hospital.
I sat rocking her on our plush, pink glider as my husband lay stretched out on the carpet, reading by the night of her glowing, pink nightlight.
He read to her,
to us,
as we both cried.
As we told our daughter,
“You are the one and only ever you”,
in so many more ways than one.
I guess lying on the floor, crying over a picturebook has become quite the theme for us,
but we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Because in many ways, our baby came about so many years earlier,
the first time that we decided to read a picturebook together, while lying on the floor, with tears streaming down our faces. That’s when we first became a family, and neither of us could have dreamed of all of the beautiful, magical, insane love we’d soon discover,
upon living
Happily Ever After.