{Preview} In our bones

A new baby drapes your home in gauze.  Wooden walls turn into a sheer, breathing tent - a cover that eases light, quiets aches, and softens the world outside.  Everything else pushes to a far away place.  Muffled.  The smallness of your bed becomes all the space you need.   Long moments pile and loop, as you watch this small person who was just growing beneath your skin.  You try on the feeling of mother.  Caregiver.  Sheppard.  Lover of someone new.  You reconnect with someone your body and spirit seems to already know.  He was meant for you.

Blindly, I run back to these early hours as my children grow.  Some days at a dizzying pace.  I come up for air, gasping for the moments when breathing, feeding, sleeping was all that mattered.  These memories fuel for the ruts, when things hurt, I am unsure, or maybe have lost my way.  Growing-up a child isn't easy.  And like weeds, they grow.  Racing towards the sun.  No matter how much you squeeze or beg or clamp shut your eyes.  They grow.

Many a wild moment will bleed and run and color the slate of their childhood.  The jungle of life pushes that early-gauze-newborn tent off way before we are ready.  Life's long arms creep in.  But we never forget.  Those first hours.  The haze.  The quiet.  The connection.  The billowing, blinding light of a new soul.

It's rooted deep in our bones.

One layer at a time

We as mothers, are weaving a dense nest.  Some layers are liquid -- shimmering, stretching, light.  And some are ragged - thin as wings.  But each day, no matter the beauty of the layer, the nest grows.  Whether we want it to or not.  Layers stream from our arms and legs, wild and long.  A whirling, mad circle.  Often I want to go back and pull the ugly pieces from yesterday.  Smoke them into sky.  But they are stuck, burrowed in with soft, oozing glue.  In their nest, the place they'll lie their heads for the rest of their lives.  A mottled place of memories.  Mistakes.  Deep love.  Ultimate safety.  Softness.  Regrets.

This nest, their childhood.

When they look back, they will find us there.  In the center.  Quiet.  Never perfect but trying.  Like a wren, we mothers are eternally busy, taking the memories, the moments, and tuck, tuck, tucking them into place.  Rearranging.  And stringing them together with songs.  Some days, layers of pure gold.  Others, nothing but scraps.  But all the while -- there we were -- singing into the light.  And building their nest.  A beautiful childhood nest.  On layer at a time.

When Seven sounds like thunder

It never fails.  When things get hard, I wonder why I was given you.  You, with your black eyes, and intense heart.  You, with your endless legs and eternal fight.  You, a bear in lamb’s gloves.  Whomever thought I was brave enough, fast enough of a mother to follow your quick wings, and care for your wild heart, didn’t know how much I would struggle.  Quickly I have learned -------

There is no easy parenting.

I often wonder how I can mother all your strength and pounding beauty.  I wake up drenched; grappling for that endless ribbon from your eyes to my heart.  I strain to follow.  And trust.  Trust in the deep contradiction that you come from me, yet aren’t mine.  Trust that the world chose me to be your mother.  Trust that in the sometimes-messy-stew of parenting fierce and independent you, there are moments of deep peace.  Quiet.  Connection.  Even shine.  And trust that slowly, I am learning to be thankful for your thunder, your growl, your glow.  For you teach me things no one else in this world ever could. 

You, my daughter.  My wild daughter of seven.

{Preview} Love prefers unmade beds

Love prefers unmade beds.  It creeps in when mealtime’s on the floor, and becomes louder when dogs and strings and Tupperware lids become toys.  Love’s song is full when feet are bare, and there is much banging on light-filled windows.  Love was parading about on this day, shaking the house with its clamor, spilling a wild, wide silken river onto the floor.  As my children grow, these are the moments I want to burn into my brain and ride into forever –- flashes of milked skin, a careless swoop of ponytail, exhaustion, dishtowels, crumbs on the floor, sun streaming in the windows – and babies - swarming at my feet.