Yesterday I said I love the babies.

I do.

I love the two boys.  I do.  To me, however, there is something so special about the girls.  I’m drawn to them in a way that I’m not with the boys.

I was talking to a friend yesterday and told him this.  I told him that I see their potential.  I see the opportunities that even I, their grandmothers, and their great-grandmothers didn’t have.  I see the possibilities.

I don’t want them to have to struggle in the same ways we may have had to do.

He, in all of his wisdom and insight, said to me that he thought it was even more than that. 

I had a difficult childhood.  He said it stems from this.

He said that he thinks I see them as pure and unharmed.  He said he sees me as wanting to protect them, to allow them to grow in a world where they don’t have to go through the same things I did.  I want to see them grow up unharmed.

He’s right.  I do.

I see my 5-year-old niece who is so much like me that it’s scary, and I see in her something so powerful and amazing.  I would do anything to stop her from being harmed.  I would do anything for her to know that she’s amazing and loved and cherished.  And she does.

My new niece deserves no less.  She deserves to be cherished and loved and treated like the precious gift she is.

The girls are special to me.  Maybe I see a piece of me in them.  Maybe I see the innocence of myself that I love in them.

I want to nourish and cultivate that.  I want them to be able to live life happily and fully and without all of the baggage that I grew up with.

They deserve that.