Scent of my daughter

My daughter smells like a combination of a new flower, the inside of a birthday cake, and milk.

When I come home from practice, her dad has already taken her to "baby school." I can feel that she is not in the house, and I go to her room. I see the blankets in her crib all tousled around like she has been both sleeping and playing, and I smell them and fold them. Her room is my own responsibility — as it happened, it just fell on me to buy and take care of her bed clothes, her books, the tidiness of this space that she has not quite owned yet. It is, sort of, my room... She sleeps here, I change her here, and we rock and nurse...but she hasn't put posters up or a sign that says "Do not enter" or "KNOCK FIRST!" The music is my mixes, the clothes are inherited or chosen by me, the layout is all my design.

But the smell of my daughter is her own. Yes, her diapers and her baby wash — picked out by me — have their own "baby scents." But when it all boils down and my child is naked and clean and wriggling and giggling...she smells like a birthday in Spring. I suppose it makes sense that she was born in May...I had not considered that before.