My Little Love
She must have had a nightmare.
Pad from the wood floor at the door across the carpet of my room comes the little girl. I spring up alert, invincible to her concern, reassuring. My tired limbs and cracking joints ignored as I pick her up and move to her room. In the dim light of dawn and a nightlight I sway to return her to her sleep.
She curls a lock of my hair around two of her still babyish fingers; two other fingertips stroke my neck. These register perfectly the state of her excursion back to sleep. Tightly she has my hair then less and less, her head lays heavy at my throat and I listen to her breathing deepen. In five minutes she's away again with the Sandman, her loving touch disipating.
Like any parent weary in the night I am glad of the swiftness of her return to sleep. I can put her down. I should. But, me? I'll linger a little while. I have spent hours in her nearly two years outside of me doing this, many minutes watching her go to rest. I hunger for the comfort of the sight of her -- sleeping or otherwise. What a thrill is the unrelenting love she gives me that makes so very much more than whole. The love that extends me beyond a single being ... to humanity.
And, oh my god, now there are TWO of them!
** I publish this with some nod to the recent call to keystrokes from HBM though I cannot say it fulfills her criteria. This instead is the best I can do -- a fragment of the story. I say on her blog, and will repeat here, it is so interesting to me how this writing forum can accommodate the marginal. It is intrinsic to this banter that no standard is in place for completeness or perfection.. (or in my case even strict coherence ;> ) I do delight in the exchange of fragments for that is all I can muster.
Pad from the wood floor at the door across the carpet of my room comes the little girl. I spring up alert, invincible to her concern, reassuring. My tired limbs and cracking joints ignored as I pick her up and move to her room. In the dim light of dawn and a nightlight I sway to return her to her sleep.
She curls a lock of my hair around two of her still babyish fingers; two other fingertips stroke my neck. These register perfectly the state of her excursion back to sleep. Tightly she has my hair then less and less, her head lays heavy at my throat and I listen to her breathing deepen. In five minutes she's away again with the Sandman, her loving touch disipating.
Like any parent weary in the night I am glad of the swiftness of her return to sleep. I can put her down. I should. But, me? I'll linger a little while. I have spent hours in her nearly two years outside of me doing this, many minutes watching her go to rest. I hunger for the comfort of the sight of her -- sleeping or otherwise. What a thrill is the unrelenting love she gives me that makes so very much more than whole. The love that extends me beyond a single being ... to humanity.
And, oh my god, now there are TWO of them!
** I publish this with some nod to the recent call to keystrokes from HBM though I cannot say it fulfills her criteria. This instead is the best I can do -- a fragment of the story. I say on her blog, and will repeat here, it is so interesting to me how this writing forum can accommodate the marginal. It is intrinsic to this banter that no standard is in place for completeness or perfection.. (or in my case even strict coherence ;> ) I do delight in the exchange of fragments for that is all I can muster.
posted by mo-wo at 5:28 a.m.
6 Comments:
So lovely. I love the sleeping toddler head nestled in my neck too. So deeply satisfying.
Lovely. I said to HBM that I have trouble writing about my love for the kids (paraphrasing but it was something like that) and that actions would have to speak for me.
You express yourself so beautifully.
I have been enjoying my daughter's willingness to cling to me in semi-sleep. I know it won't last and I want to bottle it.
I agree totally that such expression can only ever be incomplete. And some things are simply inexpressable - that was my struggle with the project of writing this physical love, the idea that it might be inexpressable. And if expressable, only incompletely so.
"The love that extends me beyond a single human being..." Yes. I have exactly this feeling. I said to a good friend, also a mother, the other day, that looking at Emilia sometimes feel like watching the universe burst into being - what is amazing about her is that her amazingness draws me outward, draws my love outward...
(Ah. The limits of language. I'm fumbling my thought. So it goes.)
After months of being a "lurker", this posting finds me out of the closet...glued to the keyboard, keeping my husband and son waiting, the desire to relate iresistable.... I LOVE MY SON SO MUCH IT HURTS!! In the very best way of course. I've said it from the day I held him in my arms.
I remember waiting for the day when he'd be able to rest his head onto my chest, the shy pose, when I held him in my arms. My body felt weak when the day came. Now there's the sticky frog pose when he pastes his legs around my body so firmly I can take my arms away from him and he goes nowhere.
I love him so much I could eat him up but what would I have left for tomorrow? I said out loud the other day, " I love him so much I want him back inside me"...what's with that? I couldn't explain it myself...
So often I feel the stiring, churning in my belly somewhere in the very pit of my gut, it must be my soul. Two souls that once were in the same shell feeling the pain of being separated?
I feel it.
That was so perfect. I really felt that. Beautiful
And yay for two :)
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