The Last of the Littles

My husband's family lives in Tuscaloosa so we make the drive there and back quite often (John makes the drive—I don’t “interstate”--thank you love!).  Charlie loves to sleep in the van with the sunlight streaming in on his chubby little cheeks.  But this last trip was taken at night, with the headlights from faster traffic lighting up the inside of the van and the occasional street light dazzling his eyes.  As it turns out, Charlie is terrified of nighttime driving.  

So I spent at least half of the two-hour drive twisted around in my seat so he could hold my hand and hear my lullabies.  As he tried to calm down, he would grab my hand and hold it as close to his chest as he could, one plump hand around my thumb and the other around my pinky.  When he got too tired for that, he let one hand fall into his lap and squeezed my index finger with all the tiny might of his right hand.  Then even this was too hard, and when his grip relaxed he screamed anew until he found my hand and pressed it hard to his chest again.  Three or four cycles into this, my spine is basically on fire.  Normally I might have settled for letting him cry himself to sleep, and maybe I should have, as I walk with a slight limp today, but I just couldn’t let go of his hand—truly, I didn’t want to.  I’ve been sad lately.  I know how blessed we are to have four healthy children.  Amazingly blessed.  And I no longer yearn to be pregnant.  I do feel done.  But as Charlie approaches his first birthday, I approach a whole new phase of my life.  I’ll soon be saying goodbye to diapers and hello to multiplication.  Goodbye to simple rhyming stories and hello to teaching another “big kid” to read.  And goodbye, even, to the almost indescribable feeling of having those two pudgy hands hold onto mine for dear life.  My last infant.  And as I sat there, with Charlie’s scared heartbeat slowing to calm under the steady drumming of my fingers against his round belly, I said goodbye to being a mom of littles.  Soon he’ll walk, and talk, and just keep growing.  And I will love the toddler he grows into, and the child he will become, and the young man I pray he will be.  Everything is beautiful in its time.  I have never heard that as I hear it now.  I cannot keep them.  God has plans for them.  Truly, they were never mine.  And I’m thanking God today for the renewed strength to be a better mother this year than I ever have before.  And I thank God for that hour-long, vertebrae-straining, baby-soothing snuggle.  When they are grown and gone, I can recall this memory, unwrap it like a treasured gift, and feel again, as I have never felt before, what it is to be a mother.   

p.s.

Dear readers of "Good & Dead",

This is yet another blog post that is not on topic.  I'm sorry for who I am as a person.  Never fear, though, book two is underway!  ;)


Here's the link if you haven't gotten book one yet.  Again, I never actually posted a link on my blog, or even made a post regarding its publication.  #WorstAuthor
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Dead-Book-English-Edition-ebook/dp/B01731FXLO