When she’s gone, Momma’s not far from the heart

She’s tiny for 2 years old, on the petite side with delicate features and a voice like the whisper of a summer breeze.

She’s tiny but tough. You have to be when you’re the youngest of four.

Mom and Dad are gone today. They left while she was sleeping, just after midnight. They’ve gone to the hospital for the delivery of baby No. 5.

The family lives on the top floor of a Chicago Greystone more than 100 years old. The old house has huge windows with beautiful wood moulding and ledges so wide an adult can sit on them.

She is curled up in one of the windows. She gingerly climbed over the radiator, which never gets more than a middling sort of warm, took a seat on a window ledge and wrapped her little arms around her little legs, which are pulled up to her chin.

She’s watching the action on the street below – cars passing, motorists parking, people walking briskly with morning coffee in one hand and cell phones in the other. Delivery trucks zip by and a mail carrier pushes his canvaslike wheelbarrow along the sidewalk.

I rock her awhile and sing a lullaby over and over. I lie down next to her, my arm wrapped around her small body. When she’s finally asleep, I pull my arm away and wrap her sister’s arm around her.

She’ll be at the window again in the morning, looking for the one who makes her feel completely safe and protected, the one who makes her being shine.