Maya came home from a 24-hour shift and as she closed the door, she noticed the unusual silence in the apartment.
Usually, she would hear small footsteps running toward her when she came home. Fiona, her two-year-old daughter, would come running toward her shouting, "Mommy, Mommy," followed by her wonderful wife.
Carina.
Carina, who usually smiled at her, greeted her with "Ciao Bella" and kissed her gently.
But today she heard none of that.
Quietly she hung up her jacket, put down her backpack and went to the former guest room. A glance into Fiona's bedroom told Maya that her daughter must have slept with her wife tonight. She hoped the cold had not returned. Fiona had been sick for the last two weeks and Carina and herself had decided to send Fiona back to the daycare the day after tomorrow. She hoped that they would be able to stick to this plan because she herself had an important workshop to attend and had to leave town for two days and Carina had a revision of a paper on the table and with a sick two-year-old she didn't have the concentration she needed to work on it.
Maya walked across the hall to the bedroom and saw her big and little love sleeping soundly. Fiona on her Mama's belly and Carina's arms wrapped tightly around her.
Maya got ready for bed as quickly as she could. She considered sleeping on the couch to avoid waking them but couldn't help lying down beside them and caressing her daughter's back.
Either the movement of the mattress or the touch woke Fiona.
Big tired blue eyes beamed at Maya.
"Good morning Baby, did you sleep well?" she smiled and carefully took her daughter from Carina into her own arms. Fiona cuddled up to her mommy immediately. She had a hard time keeping her eyes open.
"Go back to sleep Fiona, it's still early in the morning. Even though I was worried about why you and Mama weren't awake yet. Usually, you're running around the living room at that hour, right? Are you feeling worse again?" Maya asked worriedly as she felt her daughter's forehead. She was more than relieved when she noticed that the temperature didn't seem to be too high. It was probably just one of those rare days when Fiona felt like sleeping longer than seven am. Carina certainly wasn't going to be upset about it.
"Did you have a nice day with your Mama yesterday?" she asked, knowing that her daughter was almost back to sleep, "Did you go to the park? Did you play on the playground? Mama told me the other day that you were trying to climb up the monkey bars for a long time. Did you have fun doing that?" Maya thought once more about taking Fiona to a children's gymnastics class. Gymnastics was a big word here, because it was basically a place where the kids played together and were allowed to bounce around on soft mats for 45 minutes once a week. She sighed, old inner conflicts resurfacing, "I would like to encourage you. But without demanding too much. I want you to enjoy everything you do. I want to support you if you want to take up a hobby, but the one thing I want most of all is for you to have a wonderful childhood. A better childhood than I had. Baby, you are still too little for me to explain everything to you and for you to understand everything. But I will tell you as much as I can and as often as I can: You and Mama are my top priority. Always!
I want you to have lots of friends to meet whenever it can be arranged. Unless you don't want lots of friends, then that's fine too. The only thing I want is for you to be happy!”
She was probably just very tired, but Maya couldn't stop talking, so she kept on whispering after she had noticed that Fiona had fallen back into a deep sleep.
"I'm so glad I have you, my girl. Mama and I didn't always have an easy time. Most of the time it was Mommy who couldn't help but hurt others. But Mama fought for me, and I fought for her, and we made it through. And then we fought for you. Mama's pregnancy wasn't easy. You were in a hurry to come into the world. When I see you today, I think it was just too tight in her belly. You always had a strong urge to move. But we wanted you to grow a little bit more, we wanted you to be healthy. That's why Mama had to stay in the hospital for a long time to get a lot of rest. It was a very hard time for us, I was always worried. About Mama, about you and about our family.
But you and your wonderful Mama did it. You didn't come too early, you waited and showed patience, which I'm sure you didn't inherit from your mother," Maya smiled. "And then you were there. Just perfect. A perfect little person who made Mama and me mothers. We'll both be forever grateful.
You know, love is strange. You can't measure it, it just exists. I have often thought about how to imagine love. Maybe space is a good analogy. Space is infinite and so is love. But you can only see as far as space or love will go at that moment. But then a new star is found, and space has become a little bigger again. You are our star, Fiona, you have made our love grow even more," at that moment Maya's eyes filled with tears, "Okay, now it's getting crazy. There are too many feelings. I think I really need to sleep now or who knows what else I'll think of," she said, kissing her daughter's head and carefully turning them over so that they were facing the middle of the bed.
She was surprised to see that Carina was awake. Carina, who was looking at her with her warm brown eyes. Carina wiped Maya's tears and kissed her gently.
"A, we'll talk about the children's sports group again this weekend. B, I'm veeeeery patient. And C," Carina smiled her Carina-smile and hugged her wife and daughter tightly, "there are never too many feelings, Bambina!
Ti amo."