Like a woosh in the womb, you've turned, and now you are four.
When the waters broke, did time gush too, a rush, a deluge sweeping you out and away?
I can't catch you. Can't hold on to slippery you, and these days all slipping through my fingers, and that babe who slept first hours in our bed, between the beating of our hearts, two loves having mingled into one flesh, formed into this pulsing never-been-here-before heart, now you've been four long turns around the sun and I miss you.
Thought I know I shouldn't, the words too often bubble up, spill out. I tuck tendrils behind your ear and whisper into the curl of you, "I'm missing you."
And you always look up at me with those bottomless blues and wonder, "But I'm right here, Mama." Yes, child, yes....
But I've been here before, held five other babies, and I know how this goes, how you too are leaving me and I'm missing you already, missing who you were then, missing who you are now and us in this space and this place I can never hold on to, never find my way back to. Sometimes the ache scalds the insides of a mama. Time is no respecter of persons.
There are days, I hardly dare whisper, when this mothering almost feels like a death watch; watching the slow death of now and you here. New-You continually rebirths and I laugh, marvel, awe... and finger the beauty of all these husks left behind. Is mothering this endless coupling of crazy grief, wild joy? Mourning the child who is no more and never again will be and embracing this new and wondrous child just now becoming.
But when you crawl up into my lap, and I pull you up close and your little heart beats hard against mine, I can almost hear it's thrumming rebuke:
Where can the past go, but remain right here?
What was, still is, and always will be.
Lying underneath this moment, under the strata of time, is then, the past as the foundation for now, and this now will be the foundation of what is still to come. The past always remains. Bits of artifacts, who you once were is buried within who you are now. Maybe this too is true.
And I run my fingers through your hair and touch all that once was and know that now will always be here, same heart thrumming next to mine.
Lord God, when I'm missing what was, remind me that it is still here, carried deep within.
Related: Shalom's Third Birthday -- how a Mama leaves two
The Day a Child is Born -- a birth story
Three Simple Words -- the sick green of my last pregnancy, with Shalom, and three words that can get a Mama through hard days of pregnancy
Photos: on Shalom's fourth birthday, wearing her cow dress, because her daddy was raised a dairy boy
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