It Stops Me In My Tracks
I pop into Tate’s room once more as I button up the house, on my way to bed for the night. There she lies, so still, her little lips perched so beautifully on her cherub face.
It still takes my breath away, like it did when she was a baby in her cradle beside my bed. The perfection of our littles - just so piercing - as reminders of their innocence and beauty.
In the race of the daily schedules, this can be hard to see, blurred by our agendas and the speed at which life moves. Their will questioning our goals, their mess challenging our plans. The noise. The movement. The conversations.
But, late at night, with my bra off after my face is washed and I’ve had a minute to collect myself, seeing Tate’s sleeping face brings me right back to the innate sweetness of her nature and divine being.
It stops me dead in my tracks - that kind of beauty.
The way she quietly rests - my high energy, highly sensitive, outspoken, mighty sprite. My incessant motherly worries about how she’ll fair in this harsh world, once it gets ahold of her, fade away. All of it - suddenly okay.
I flash to the first few years when her mouth would suck in her sleep, her cheeks unconsciously, rhythmically, pulling in and out. Bringing me back to our nursing days. Gently reminding me how much a part of her I am.
I fast-forward to seeing her as a teenager. It’s hard to even imagine that during the days but here, as she sleeps, I see it. See her bigger, how she’ll look in larger form. I feel her already almost there, how deeply she thinks and quickly she learns.
*
Tonight, she’s having a hard time winding down, which happens more and more often these days. She goes from hyperactivity to anger, to silly, to frustration to gratitude and back around again until my shushing and my tickling finally help her let go.
I dive into my book, desperate for more time to nurture my brain in this way. A bit resentful of how long that took, all the while, grateful for the closeness after some ‘too busy’ days and lots of sharing.
After a furiously read chapter, I look over at my girl.
As always, the tranquility of Tate’s face and the gorgeous heaviness of her shoulders s i m p l y stops time.
Her hands, now so big with thinner fingers, hold her little, worn ‘Kuddly’ the way she’s always slept; her outstretched legs, now so long, twist like a big girl’s, making up most of her five-foot-tall self.
I’m struck, yet again, by what it does to me.
To see her sleep. To watch her surrendered, so.
Though I want to get back to my book, I close it, turn on my side and breathe her in - the years behind, the years to come.
Yes, I can still see her sleeping as a baby, those lips the same, though her face has elongated, shows dryness and a new mole I’ve yet to know.
And, I can see her as a young woman in her twenties, sleeping in a different kind of nighty, perhaps next to a boyfriend. And wonder if he’ll be bowled over by her light, even a fraction of the way I am, when I watch her sleep.
Better damn be.
