Last night, my little one peed her bed, just as I was about to fall asleep. After cleaning her up, dressing her, and stripping her sheets, I was suddenly facing a whole night of her curled up against me in my bed, fighting me for my own pillow. Every dream, or discomfort of hers meaning a kick of her little perfect feet into my sides.
So I got up and ran down the hall to the open bedroom. Pillow in hand I crawled into my older daughter’s sheets that I haven’t changed since she left for NYC six weeks ago.
Next morning I’m brushing my teeth when there’s a slam on the door. It’s not a knock. It’s the clear attempt by tiny hands to enter. Then she grabs the door knob and opens it. “shit” I think to myself, I’ve woken her somehow.
She’s beaming. “You not go to work yet! I downstairs – looking for you.” Eyes wide, face broadening into a smile her face can’t contain. I only work one day a week, so she’s used to having me. This morning she’d woken on her own and found my spot in the bed empty.
We embraced on the floor of the bathroom. Her relaxing into relief on me. Me, feeling every inch of how she fits. We stopped and looked at each other again. “I’m still here!” I smiled wider than before, “and you found me!” Another hug, this one purely for the enjoyment of her small, fervent touch.
In her is every need for her mother. Every atom of my being is hers, and she knows it. She lives off it. When I’m away, there’s still a part of her body, even at almost 3 years old, that aches for me. The terror she felt at missing a last hug and kiss, the fullness of our togetherness, led her into a dark downstairs, alone, searching, hoping.
That ache never goes away.
Maybe it feels like anger. Maybe it feels like grief. Maybe it feels like indifference, a solid block of nothing where you know there should be something.
Or maybe you can feel the ache of sadness, the rawness, the need.
The unbreakable connection with your mother. The pain of distance.
When doubt creeps in we think we aren’t loved enough, that we can’t love enough. We forget that we ARE LOVE.
Children know it. I know it, sometimes. I hope my mother, my sister, my girlfriends know it. Do you know it?
