Coco Pops, Cold Coffee and Growing Up
I swim in this ocean filled with the wants and needs of the children I have created. Time doesn't exist anymore inside of today's messy scene. Coco pops in the morning, green juices for lunch, nappies changed, adventures taken and the sibling's fights broken up.
Love laid bare at the foot of it all.
I catch fleeting glimpses of the woman I was before this. The girl I was. Sometimes I see her dancing poetically at my window. Sometimes she lingers in the hallway of my home. Sometimes she stands in my driveway, raises one arm and slowly waves (goodbye). I remember the things that used to break her no longer break her. No longer break me. I have a thick skin nowadays. Tearing open my vagina to birth a human-being probably did it. Thickened my skin, that is. Scar tissue from my head to my toes. My problems before I was a mother just seem childish now as I drink my cold coffee with one hand and roll play dough with the other.
I grew up when I breathed them out.
I became a little tougher, a little rounder, and yet a little more clear.
I throw what niggles me, what hurts me, what haunts me, what barks at me behind me - for now - so I can focus on cutting their sandwich into four cub-sized pieces.
I smile at the little girl I made who sits across the bench from me, her wide eyes looking up with a "how do you do life, mama?" question on her small, angelic face. It is my hands (always the hands) that answer her.
There is no sound, just the movement of my thirty-three year old hands that say "I don't know. I am in the middle of this and I am simply working my way through it. Is that ok?"
But is it?
ok?
He, my little boy, tells me it is. He wraps his entire body around my legs and looks up at me with acceptance. Oh and my even smaller son? He drinks from me with a stunning expectation I used to know. He expects nurturance and love and it reminds me of the small animal I once was. I remember that yes, we all deserve nurturance and love.
I learn from them.
All of them.
These children of mine,
loaned to me for how long I do not know.
And yes it is ok.
I am ok.
For I am inside the Mother I never dreamt I'd be.
I am on my knees with gratitude for the long days I will ache to feel again when they are grown.
