Miracle Creek

by Angie Kim

People talked so much about the loss of intimacy between married couples as the years progress, so many studies about the number of times a couple has sex in the first year of marriage versus the remaining years, but no one measured the number of hours spent holding your baby in the first year of life versus the remaining years, the dramatic dissipation of intimacy—the sensual familiarity of nursing, holding, comforting—as children pass from infancy and toddlerhood to the teens. You lived in the same house, but the intimacy was gone, replaced by aloofness, with splashes of annoyance. Like an addiction, you could go for years without it, but you never forgot it, never stopped missing it, and when you got a dab of it, like now, you craved it more and wanted to gorge on it.

This is something that I feel so acutely as a mother. One of my kids is still young enough that I can give him huge hugs and cuddle up with him reading or watching TV and he won’t be annoyed, but two of my kids are teenage boys (so you can imagine their response, haha). I remember when they were babies and they’d wake up in the middle of the night. I’d be so annoyed at having to get up, of course, but a part of me loved that night nursing time, holding the baby in my arms in the darkened nursery, the whole house quiet. I really miss it.