The Suppertime Sun

I put Riley in time out today, on a dining room chair next to a window where the deep gold of a late afternoon sun filtered through cherry and poplar leaves. The light glimmered on the wall just behind her. I watched her from the kitchen where I was making spaghetti. She was amused at first, then serious, plotting things out. Her brow furrowed, she told me to "go away," her code in 3-speak for "Stop looking at me so I can do something I know is not allowed."

But I was transfixed by her beauty, the way her curls tumbled over one eye, the sun a kaleidoscope of color around her, her tiny body in that grown-up chair, lips in puckered defiance. And I saw her, 10, 15, 20 years from now as clearly as I could see the blooms of my knockout roses through the window, the red sauce on the spoon in my hand. I wanted to freeze that scene, put it in a glass globe and hold it close, study how breathtaking she is in her innocence and ferocity. And I thought, This is what it means to have a daughter.

I put the spoon on the stove and went to her, breaking my own rule about not breaking time out. My heart was so full of that image--how quickly those years would go, how this is the only time she and her brother will be wholly ours, how I'll long for her attention one day like she asks for mine, how she'll tell me again to leave her alone, and again, and again, and I'll still go to her like I am now.

I hold out my arms. "Can I hug you?"

She holds up her palms, shakes her head. Her curls swing across cherub cheeks that will thin over the next few months.

"No. Go away."

I sit beside her on the enormous chair. "Can I sit here with you?"

"No." She scoots in my direction, presses with one hip. I pretend to fall, roll to the floor. She moves back into place, trying not to grin.

I sit on my heels, look up at her. She's like an angel. I'm not sorry I broke the time-out rule.

And then, like magic, she climbs down onto the floor with me, then up onto my lap where she folds herself into my arms. She lets me hug her, put my face into those curls, and I try not to cry because time is moving so fast. Because in 10, 15, 20 years, I will hope and pray when she's hurting, when she needs me, that she'll want to feel my arms around her. That there's a chance she might remember this day, when mommy held her on the dining room rug in the warm light of a suppertime sun.