We need each other.

Yesterday a Twitter friend tweeted about his kids sobbing at preschool drop-off. I was back crouching under the window in the door at the Emerald City in a split-second, listening to the little angel screaming for me and throwing her little body against the door. I'm on the verge of tears at the memory, just the memory.

Then this morning, I read a post on BlogHer about the advice people give when your toddler has sleep issues, and my body had a visceral reaction. My body remembers the feeling of walking through water, the dimming of my hearing, the sometimes tunnel vision of extreme, prolonged sleep deprivation. Ever since my girl had her sleep problems, I can now feel the exact moment I fall asleep. It's a tingly feeling, and I've been jerked from sleep just as my body started to tingle so many times I now treasure that feeling. I've always needed a lot of sleep, but I never clung to it as much before motherhood as I do now. I cling to sleep the way some people cling to chocolate. I am in love with sleeping and what sleeping the right amount can do for my health, my mood and my intellect. Sleep gives me hope again.

I'm at the midpoint right now -- that period after my child can wipe her own butt and toast her own bread and before the tweener hormones and puberty kicks in. It's like the second trimester -- this period between five and nine when the sun shines brightly and she learns to ride a bike and she likes to cuddle and she writes the best stories and she wants to hug me all the time. The pause in the climb when you secure your footholds and check your ropes and notice the view is dazzling up here.

I take pictures on my phone of the evidence of her play and keep the sweet notes she leaves for me almost daily and record her stories on this blog in case the feeling of her arms around my waist isn't as powerful as the feeling of shame and the overwhelming desire to protect and the obligation of needing to go to work I felt crouching below that window at daycare. Sometimes the bad feelings linger longer than the good ones, and I squirrel away every sign of her love for when the day comes that she shouts "I hate you." When that day comes, I will try to remember how overwhelming hormones can feel and how confusing it is to be an adolescent and how much I needed to push away everyone I loved during my own teen years. Her adolescence may not be as rough as mine was, but I was a firebrand and I have every reason to expect a steep climb to her twenties.

So when she screams, "I hate you," I will look at those pictures, and I will read this blog, and I will cuddle her old stuffed animals and I will concentrate on that feeling of the little arms around my waist. And then I will probably cry out to the Internet for some parent with children a little older than mine to tell me it will be okay again. That this feeling, too, will pass, and that the view from the very top is worth every minute when the wind blew rain in my face.