I think about my kids all the time. I know, they are not kids any more. They are all adults- in fact, three are in their 30s and two in their 40s. I want to say "how did that happen?". Of course I know how it happened. Time keeps moving forward and all of us do too. But that's not the "how" I marvel at and question. It is the perpetual question about life and everything . "How" maybe "why". Nobody knows the answers to those questions any more that they know why people and animals die.
But back to the kids. Every day I feel like I am composing letters. I want to write a letter to each of them and try to explain how it feels to love so much and so hard and so unconditionally. Each one of them.
They all have such amazing qualities and passions. They understand things that I never will. Just like I know and understand things that they will never know or understand.
How do I explain how much I loved them even before I actually felt them flutter in my belly? Knowing that a wanted life is growing inside is an amazing thing. The babies I lost. The ones I had.
I remember Nick's mother talking about how she dreamed of her kids as little kids- around eight years old. I get it. In my heart they are all my babies and my children. Little kids with skinned knees. Hurt feelings. Happy and sad. I know that they remember everything differently than I do. Sometimes it's frustrating to me when I feel like they blame me for things that I honestly don't even remember. And I wonder if they remember good things. Like playing with playdough on the kitchen table. Finger painting and coloring with the plastic table cloth on the kitchen table to keep is somewhat clean.
Do they remember me sitting at my sewing machine and creating various Halloween costumes and costumes for comic-con? I hope that those memories are somewhere in their busy life brains.
Nick and I often reflect on all the times we drove this one to one thing and that one to another. Nick has driven to Ohio, Richmond and Maine to help the kids out with their moves or other needs. I have slept on a recliner in a hospital room to be make sure my adult son got the medical care and attention he needed.
I am not listing these things as something we need to be thanked for. We did them willingly and with love. Not obligation. Giving as a gift of self the thinking of it as giving but just as being.
I've been thinking about writing this for a while now and I am not really sure I am articulating very well.
No comments:
Post a Comment