First Thing

"Snuggle down here Little One; we don’t have to get up just yet."

You smell delicious lying here next to me - like fresh baked bread: warm and indulgent and comforting. I can't help it, still after all these years, almost six now, I love the smell of your hair and I will steal a snuffle whenever I can. One day I guess you won’t want me to anymore, will brush me off with the disdain only a teen can muster and deliver, but for now you acquiesce with more grace than I deserve.

So there we both are with only our noses peeking out, it’s just us girls in my big bed. Our time before we really, really, really do have to get up and rush about like mad things to get out the door in time for school. We chat about nothing of consequence, we laugh at the cat – the third of our coven, who insists on being part of our morning ritual. Little One looks at me with her father’s eyes laid underneath my expressions and as sometimes happens, my voice catches as I notice that they also look like me mother’s eyes, but only sometimes.

I have often told Little One that her granny would have loved her, I mean really loved her. There are traits that all three of us hold and I have had day dreams of how much fun we would have had together, how they would have related to each other and how different life would be had my mother still been here.

She is not, nor ever will be, so it is just the two of us today, snuggled up warm and giggling in bed, avoiding the chill of the bedroom. I’m glad of this time we share, only little moments perhaps, but quietly precious to me.

“Oooh, I do love you Little One.”

“I love you too Mummy.”