I checked on my child twice after she was asleep

Dear Delyara, I am a mother, and tonight after my daughter went to bed, I went back into her room twice. The first time was because she had coughed earlier and I wanted to hear her breathing. The second time I told myself it was because I was putting away clothes, but really I just wanted to look at her face when she wasn’t guarding it from me. That’s another thing motherhood does to you. Even after a whole day of being needed and interrupted and touched and spoken to, you can still stand in the doorway of a sleeping child and feel your heart open with a tenderness so deep it almost hurts. She looked peaceful. I did not feel peaceful. But seeing her like that still softened something in me. Sometimes the same child who exhausts you all evening is the one who makes you cry quietly at 10 p.m. because she looks so small asleep. Both things can be true. That may be the truest thing I know about family life.