If I Could Keep you Little

There are moments when I have an acute sense of time passing me by.
Tonight, that crushing feeling in my chest, that prickle of tears behind my eyes was brought on by Penelope's sweet curls.  That's it.  That's all it took.
Fresh from her bath, the smell of lightly fragranced baby soap wafted off the top of her head.  Her warm body wrapped in cotton relaxed into my chest.  She sat on my lap in the rocking chair facing her sister who read her a book, both of them giggling, when her tight little curls came into focus.  I realized, achingly, how fleeting the moment was:  her softness, her smallness, her infancy, her childhood, her innocence.  The tiny ringlets in her hair.  Soon, much too soon, all of that would be gone, and that understanding crushed me in one fell swoop.
Perhaps it was the greater realization that a phase of my life has come to an end. 
There was such a time when the possibility of making a family hung in the air.  When the desire to have a baby became so great, I was fevered to possess one.  I was so excited to become a mother, I could hardly wait the nine months it took to meet our baby.  And I felt that way again.  And again.  But never again?
Then there was my brother and his wife, and Dan's two sisters who have also enriched my life with many babies, my wonderful nieces and nephews:  ten to be exact.  The youngest on both sides is named Auston; he's my brother's fourth child, and three months younger than Penelope.  We celebrated his first birthday today, and in doing so, acknowledged he's leaving his infancy behind.  There are no longer any infants in our family.  And so, I am not only mourning the leaving behind of a period in my life, of fertility and pregnancy and newborns, but I am feeling the loss of that joy, that time in our lives, for my fellow siblings as well.
If I could keep you little...it's the name of a book on Penelope's shelf.  If I could keep you little, I'd give you baths every day just to watch your hair turn into ringlets.  Nobody ever told me how painful it is to watch your kids grow up.  Well, maybe they did, but I was completely unprepared for curls to cut me up inside.  To pinch my heart so hard, it hurts.