Leo

I am home for fall break, and I now feel like I can finally fully dwell on one truly amazing recent event that I don't think I've entirely processed. Even when I was still at school, I frequently found my mind wandering off to this one precious occurrence from September 18, 2009:

My beautiful nephew Leonardo Spencer Martin was born, and he is pictured above with his beautiful mother (who also happens to be my beautiful sister) as they are both getting acclimated to this whole breastfeeding business. I figured it would be weird to see my sister with a baby. Well, her baby, more specifically. Even as I was driving the 9 or so hours to get to Chattanooga, TN, from Fredericksburg, VA, I could not really fathom the reality of the situation -- that I was about to meet my nephew/my sister's son/my parents' grandson. My other older sister and I arrived pretty much immediately after Leo was born, so we had to wait about half an hour to go into the delivery room. Still, it wasn't real. I knew it would be. I knew I would see that baby boy and it would smack me in the face. But when I entered the room, I only saw my sister. She was holding Leo, yes, but I could not tear my eyes away from my sister to take in the awesome vision of her newborn son. It's like in 27 Dresses when Katherine Heigl's character says she always looks at the groom when the bride is coming down the aisle, because his face says it all. Well, my sister's face said it all. Her eyes were completely puffy from crying, and her entire expression was soft with what one could not label anything but pure love. This woman was not the sister I knew. She was not the sister who would ignore me when we were kids because I was annoying. Or the sister who punched me in the stomach. Or the sister who graduated high school early so she could finally get out on her own, away from her family. Or the sister who took pride in emotional detachment for the likes of logical reasoning. No, this was a woman who had just cried hysterically for an entire half hour because she yearned to hold her child. This was a woman who discovered a level of love she never knew was attainable. This was a woman humbled, awestruck, selfless. Puffy eyes, red cheeks and all, I'd never seen anything more beautiful. Until I saw this: Talk about precious moments, folks. God dished out a huge one when He brought Leo into this world.