I tell my daughter stories. There once was a little girl who was born with an enormous heart. The child’s heart was a mountain. The small girl was born perfect and full of love. Still, there existed empty spaces inside the cavern of her heart. These empty spaces rattled like pennies in a tin can

As this little girl grew, so did her heart.  Experiences filled her. The more she loved, the more her heart expanded. As her heart widened, the wind whistled in the beautiful open spaces.

The small child became a woman with a heart that thundered.

My daughter listens to this story hungry for the part when the woman becomes a mother. Oh, how the heart did stretch itself then, I tell her.

The story ends with the woman wrinkled and grey. Her heart, grown as big as the universe, beat with the memory of all the woman ever loved, finally is silent.

When the story is over, my daughter who is two and lives every day like it is a poem waiting to be written, asks,

Momma. Does a heart so big ever break?

I stare at my daughter’s hands. I think about all the things her hands will reach for, touch. My daughter’s hands are both her present and her future. They are round and soft, still chubby with an infancy the rest of her body is starting to separate from. I stare at my daughter’s beautiful hands. I listen to her whistling heart. Her heart that is a mountain.

All hearts break, baby.

I want to tell my daughter what loss feels like. I want to share hospital rooms where you bleed out babies onto sterile tables, and doctors try to fill your ache with gauze. I want her to know that angry fingers force themselves into places they should never be. I want to turn on the news and rock her hard like an earthquake. I want her to starve in my arms, just so I can arm her against hunger. I want her to get lost on the safety of her small bed, so I am sure to find her. I want to protect her. I can’t.

All hearts break, baby.  I want you to remember that when a heart cracks open, the love a Momma has for her daughter never spills out.

I put my daughter’s perfect hand inside my own. We thunder.

Hearts break. Hearts recover.