I spent the day reading through years of blogging, pulling out anecdotes for a speech due tomorrow. In the first post I have, Bullar, now 11, was four months old.
If it’s between 2 and 9 in the morning, I can sleep with Bullar crawling on me. Apparently I was. As I began to awake, I felt a sweaty little hand pushing on the left side of my face. I opened my eyes and turned in the direction of the push, just as Bullar grabbed the right side of my face with his other hand. He gave a HUGE adorable smile and then landed a big wet kiss right on my lips, gripping my ears tightly as he did. . . I wonder if he knew it was Mothers’ Day.
Maybe it's the migraine (homework ceases not for migraines), or maybe not, but I feel so dang SAD I can't stand it. I didn't love those babies enough. I loved them like crazy, I loved being a stay-at-home mama, but it's never enough. I'm sick that I left any moment unloved.
I remember my grandmother telling me that she couldn't stand to look at old photos. As a young mom, this boggled my mind. I was so eager to see the differences in my kids as they aged. Would I not long to see their tiny faces after they put their adult faces permanently on display?
I get it now. She loved those babies more than anything else, as much as she could, and seeing the limit of that is devastating.
When I was a kid, my then-teenage cousin (Greg, not Robbie, if any relatives are reading) would sometimes hold me under the water in our backyard pool (or a neighbor's). I remember one particular time, at a friend's birthday party, when he held me down for so long that my lungs caught fire. I knew without a smidgen of doubt that I would be dead inside the space of a second. And I felt sad, so deeply sad, because I would never get to say I love you to anyone ever again. I knew right then, as he let my body rush up towards the surface, the purpose of life.
It comes back to me again looking at old pictures of my boys. I can read in my blog posts that I was sure the purpose of parenting was to educate them, to raise good citizens, to change the world through my children. Wrong. I was wrong. How did I forget it, little ones at my heels? The purpose of parenting is to love.
The purpose of everything is to love.
The deepest sadness of all, a sadness I can barely stand, is that I can never love anyone more than I can.
If it’s between 2 and 9 in the morning, I can sleep with Bullar crawling on me. Apparently I was. As I began to awake, I felt a sweaty little hand pushing on the left side of my face. I opened my eyes and turned in the direction of the push, just as Bullar grabbed the right side of my face with his other hand. He gave a HUGE adorable smile and then landed a big wet kiss right on my lips, gripping my ears tightly as he did. . . I wonder if he knew it was Mothers’ Day.
Maybe it's the migraine (homework ceases not for migraines), or maybe not, but I feel so dang SAD I can't stand it. I didn't love those babies enough. I loved them like crazy, I loved being a stay-at-home mama, but it's never enough. I'm sick that I left any moment unloved.
I remember my grandmother telling me that she couldn't stand to look at old photos. As a young mom, this boggled my mind. I was so eager to see the differences in my kids as they aged. Would I not long to see their tiny faces after they put their adult faces permanently on display?
I get it now. She loved those babies more than anything else, as much as she could, and seeing the limit of that is devastating.
When I was a kid, my then-teenage cousin (Greg, not Robbie, if any relatives are reading) would sometimes hold me under the water in our backyard pool (or a neighbor's). I remember one particular time, at a friend's birthday party, when he held me down for so long that my lungs caught fire. I knew without a smidgen of doubt that I would be dead inside the space of a second. And I felt sad, so deeply sad, because I would never get to say I love you to anyone ever again. I knew right then, as he let my body rush up towards the surface, the purpose of life.
It comes back to me again looking at old pictures of my boys. I can read in my blog posts that I was sure the purpose of parenting was to educate them, to raise good citizens, to change the world through my children. Wrong. I was wrong. How did I forget it, little ones at my heels? The purpose of parenting is to love.
The purpose of everything is to love.
The deepest sadness of all, a sadness I can barely stand, is that I can never love anyone more than I can.