My son is sleeping on my husband's chest, snuggled in an "O" against his broad shoulders in a snuggly nest, resting easy, gently. I want my son to wake up, because I haven't seen him this morning.
My husband let me sleep in, because I stayed up last night writing and working on grad school assignments. I woke refreshed and awake, not my usual still-feel-like-I-need-two-more-hours-of-sleep grogginess. Dare I say, refreshed? Yes, I was refreshed.
As I walked by my two darlings, my husband was singing and saving me off, as in "Go away, so you don't wake the boy! He is almost asleep." I went to the kitchen to get my breakfast and make coffee. I toasted two slices of cinnamon-raisin bread and slowly buttered it, taking my time. I put my son's toys in the basket that I washed yesterday, placing them in like an organizer would, quite a difference than their daily throw-it-in-the-basket routine. I did some laundry, changing over a load in the washer to the dryer and taking the dried clothes out of the laundry room.
I want my little one to wake up. I miss his little face, his little body, is tiny shoulders. How he's grown! Yet, he is still so tiny.
I can hold his hand now, and it makes me giddy. My hands and long fingers intertwine with his mini fingers that will grasp so many tangible and intangible things in his lifetime.
He will hold the crayon, that he writes his name with for the first time, with those hands. He will hold a pencil, to take a college entrance exam, with those fingers. He will hold that same pencil as he struggles through a college class. He may hold a beer in those hands in college. With those hands, he will hold the hand of a woman who will break his heart. These thoughts give me goose bumps. How beautiful his hands are! How magnetic! Drawing me to them, as if my eyes are magnetized. My heart pulls me closer every day to this new and joyful love of mother and son.
My husband and my son are in the same room as I write this, their chests breathing in and out together in unison, the same hearts, bonded with mine.
Love is an amazing thing. It isn't always floodlights and fireworks, shining brightly above a star-filled sky, with fiery and colored flames sparkling down and dropping into a scenic river or lake. Sometimes love is blurry, like in a rainstorm when the windshield wipers aren't working. You can't see a thing and have road rage, because you're stuck in the clogged congestion of life's freeway with people honking at you to hurry up.
Sometimes, not all the time, just sometimes, love is pure magic. It stops you dead in your tracks, as if alone in a white, fluffy forest frosted with elegance. It whistles at you and shouts its name. Stitching, beating, breathing, beating, breathing heart murmurs all over your sky-filled soul. You sit on a lawn, with a blanket below your knees. Hot, warm, summer skin in the dark with stars bright and plump like ripe apples, and wonder, working willfully, scattering wisdom and love across your own family sky.
When can you take a moment today to meditate on what you love most about your child?
#normalizenurturing
