Story Shorts: Almond Joy

Welcome to Story Shorts, where I construct an arbitrary short story of varying length and theme that lets me scratch my creative writing itch and allows me to pretend I am an author! Enjoy <3

Almond Joy

With foreheads held together and noses resting tip to tip, an ageless quality wraps its arms around us; we are settled in harmony. The two tiny mounds that are your body and head are everything that every baby is for a snapshot of time, but right now, with noses rubbing together, you are every age you will ever be. I am every age that I will ever be. We are timeless and ageless; we are equals.

I squeeze my eyes closed and breathe in your exhales. I am reconnected with the part of me that I let go of with the unclasping of two hands. You are the bird that burst from them. Never to return or be with me in the same way twice. Each day we grow and change, in some ways always apart, as branches from the same tree.

With my eyes closed and our foreheads and noses touching warmly, you could be freckled with a missing front tooth or have mascara-stained cheeks sulking away a disappointment wrapped up in the protection of my arms. Now, I stretch my imagination to feel the creases in our foreheads line up and our loose gray hairs itching the sunspots on each other’s faces, a distant wrinkle in time wrapped up as a present for our youthful selves to anticipate reaching together.

Puckering my lips for the gentlest kiss parts them enough to engulf your sculpted button nose. You bring me back. I open my eyes and lean back to see you as you are now, like an Almond Joy treat. Those two almonds on top are the mounds that you are now. You rest on the coconut shreds that are my bed, a haven. The chocolate drizzled over you is like the cover of darkness that is tonight, but also my desire to protect and love you. The joy that your simple existence brings will only grow as you become yourself, and the treat for me is witnessing you Liv.

About Almond Joy

I wrote a version of this at 5 am in bed with Livia when she was a month old. What it was then isn’t quite what it is now since I wrote it in my head, but the essence and the key phrases that struck me are here. Already at six weeks, I see and feel her body elongating from the tucked-up newborn bundle she was fresh from the womb.

There are so many feels during the first few hours. Days. Weeks. Months. It all knits together to be one blip. As my brain downplays the traumas, the sweet blissful moments get stretched and blur as they fill the pain, worry, and exhaustion that go hand in hand.

With great love, especially love so sacrificed for, comes great trepidation. Suddenly life feels as fragile and vulnerable as the infant itself. For me, the first weeks with Livia were filled with fear from loving her so much and dreading how often I would be wrecked with anxiety over her health and happiness for the rest of our lives.

Having a child is signing up for so much more misery than changing diapers at 3 am or having baby poop stains on anything and everything. If only that were it. No, it is fear they will grow up and decide you are wackadoo and estrange themselves from you or that they will get cancer and suffer before dying before you when all you want is to raise a best friend that you will grow old with.

That’s the essence of what I wrote. Moving past the negative thoughts of fear and focusing on the positive life of now, not letting that mind think the horrors of what life can bring, but knowing them and feeling all the more thankful for every single moment together.

So this is to Liv, capturing my intense desire to live our lifetimes together in joy and appreciation for one another.