That pinching of the heart

Cheesy warning!

Read no further if you have a low-cheese threshold. Or if you groan easily in romantic movies. Or if you hate babies.

If none of these apply, please continue reading:

 

I’ve noticed something recently, something different between Nico and I. I call it the pinching-of-the-heart syndrome.

For example: I am in the middle of reading something on the history of rhetoric for one of my classes. Nico is in her bouncer. She was fast asleep. I was rocking her with my foot. But then she woke up. Her pacifier had fallen out. I looked down and she was trying to put it back into her mouth. But, being only four months old and lacking coordination powers, it was going toward her right nostril rather than her mouth. So I helped her. As I often do. I put the pacifier back in her mouth. And then, as she often does, she reached both hands up and latched on to my hand, helping me direct the pacifier back into her mouth. But also just hugging my hand. My wrist really. Her little hands there just hugging my wrist. Clinging to it.

And just like that–Boom. The twisting of the heart. The pinching. A physical love-hurt.

I’ve felt this kind of love before, of course. With Marta. With people before Marta who I was in love with. With my family, though less so. Not that I love you guys less, just that I’ve loved you for so long it doesn’t always come in such intense doses. 😉 But with Nico it’s like a condensed version of any love I’ve felt before. It’s a sort of “I love you so much I would squeeze you right out of your skin if I could, if that were a good thing, which I know it’s not, but man do I love you” feeling.

It’s eye-wateringly strong. This heart-pinching. It’s I-will-squeeze-my-vocal-chords-with-my-own-dramatic-gulping strong. It is something that fills books and art works and plays and memoirs galore. It is so, so, so quotidian, I know. But man does it make you want to pee your pants and do a little dance in the yard because you are so god damn in love with a 14-pound sack of flesh and wobbly limbs who is only just now beginning to get control over her own neck.

And that’s really all I have to say.

Well, except for this: