Tonight
It could’ve been yesterday when my eyes swooned to the fresh eyes speaking to mine. We would snuggle in silence, our bodies so familiar and feeling mostly one. I still anticipate talking with a bold and brash four-year-old, uninhibited by conscience and curious to no end. I still expect to walk in on an eight year old unencumbered by modesty.
It used to be so easy to come together at the end of the day and feel light as she drifted off. We would read a picture book and then I would sing her songs. She would tell me stories. We would chat for what seemed an eternity. I would rub her back and wait for the heavy breath that signaled she was safely off to sleep. Sometimes it took so long I would doze off too.
These moments are becoming memories as I tread new ground and hit barriers of her independence. I respond with a heart wrenching immediacy to tell her how much I love her. My unspoken words are how full my heart feels in her childlike presence and how cautious I am to face her adolescence.
Tonight I am taken by a tidal wave of overwhelm. It encompasses both the plight of an overworked mother, who doesn’t have more time to give, and an underworked mother, who should be mastering so much more. I could sense all the hours I’ve wasted and all the ways I'm failing this beautiful being. Her silence signaling she is moving off on her own and I am merely on the trail left behind in her wake.
She has always been her own universe but now she expands exponentially. I can’t deny this dwarfing feeling as I calibrate my place in the new realms of her existence. I am left spinning; incessantly stroking her hair and aching for a lullaby to set it all right. Her back is turned towards me as she clutches her tattered and worn lovey.
How am I just now realizing we have been moving this whole time? Home was just a silly word that I believed anchored us to one way. We are coming and going at our own pace, all of us orbiting our singular fate.
This mother connection draws me to a ceaseless ache in my heart growing with each passing breath. I wonder will we ever again be as close as we are even now? The spiral of this journey seems to tighten as our emotional proximity loosens. My breath getting more shallow as I come to these thoughts. I could cry because I cannot stifle the growth. I fear all that we shall stumble upon in the coming years.
I keep telling myself I am the mother, I must act like the mother; and yet still I feel so much like a child in the dark.
Fear Not
Again and Again
After all this time, I can’t see what it is I want to write except that I want to write and I know that is my true way in this life.
Read moreMothering
Constricting
She felt the crisp air in her lungs. There was a sensation which felt good when she expected it to feel lonely and frigid. She too felt as if the deep frozen parts of her being we’re welcoming her to witness the beauty that formed from hardened fluidity. The snow falling faster as the flakes were growing larger. She thought about the warmth of her stove and the satisfaction of having something brewing a top it all day. The inside was calling her back to the warmth to the light. A candle flickered on her table, she could see it from the yard and yet she let it be. A deep knowing told her there would always be a way to go back and get warm. For now, the majesty of the environment was where she was being drawn.
Lost in Time
I miss you in the mundane moments of daily life, though you never really were too involved in those moments the older I got. I am entrenched in the days, unloading the dishwasher and tightening the mittens on small hands. I am wearing comfy clothes and standing in my house looking wearily around. Here you are, still young; about to have a cigarette and looking weary and hopeful all at the same time. I miss you still.
Transition
The movement calls me to the moment and I am cast into a sea I can wholly not ignore. Sometimes the business of life is a gift of transition.
Read moreStored Moments
I’m thinking about how a person knits two years together. They are seamless in fact but they are definitive a measurement, created from some being long ago. We continue to agree that this is the way and yet in the silence of the morning, alone with our breath, we each know we have our own way of measuring the phases we move through.