My little son stirred in his sleep tonight. I heard him let out a few little cries, and went in to see if he was waking. He had gone to bed with flushed cheeks... from fever or teeth or perhaps just chapped from winter's harsh wind.
Like so many mothers before me, and so many to come, I laid my hand against his forehead in search of clues to his discomfort. Content with the feel of it, my hand travelled to cheek and then chest, hoping to comfort him back to deep sleep.
Under thin pajamas and the tiny arc of his ribs, I could feel the steady thumping of his heart against my hand. A single organ, working tirelessly, without pause, to fulfill its solitary duty of pumping life through an unimaginable network of veins and arteries, keeping my child alive.
In that instant, the simultaneous terror and miracle of life was before me. With one hand still on my sleeping child, the other sought out the swell of my belly, feeling for the stirrings of another child I have yet to meet. Another child with beating heart - miraculously alive within me and already terrifyingly precious, yet still unknown.
With all I think I know and believe I have learned, with every formative experience of my youth and adulthood, it is truly this gift of Motherhood that has acted as a revelation to me of the true mystery and immensity of life; as though a heavy curtain were peeled back, revealing a night-sky full of glittering stars.
Like so many mothers before me, and so many to come, I laid my hand against his forehead in search of clues to his discomfort. Content with the feel of it, my hand travelled to cheek and then chest, hoping to comfort him back to deep sleep.
Under thin pajamas and the tiny arc of his ribs, I could feel the steady thumping of his heart against my hand. A single organ, working tirelessly, without pause, to fulfill its solitary duty of pumping life through an unimaginable network of veins and arteries, keeping my child alive.
In that instant, the simultaneous terror and miracle of life was before me. With one hand still on my sleeping child, the other sought out the swell of my belly, feeling for the stirrings of another child I have yet to meet. Another child with beating heart - miraculously alive within me and already terrifyingly precious, yet still unknown.
With all I think I know and believe I have learned, with every formative experience of my youth and adulthood, it is truly this gift of Motherhood that has acted as a revelation to me of the true mystery and immensity of life; as though a heavy curtain were peeled back, revealing a night-sky full of glittering stars.
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4 comments:
All I can say is...amen.
lovely.
Beautiful! ...and did I ever tell you that you have such a wonderful way with words?
deep :)
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