I became a mother on a cold night in November, cut hip to hip in trauma and we both bear the scars, me slung low across my stomach and her with the jagged white lines that dot her little legs like scar-tissue freckles.
They strap your arms down for an emergency c-section and it is unnatural because all of motherhood is spent reaching, hands unconsciously hovering to to catch, to cuddle, to soothe.
Later when one pound eight ounces miraculously grows into an indomitable three year old and the days are spent long in time out, one for her for throwing things and one for me to count to ten before I start thinking about throwing things, there my arms are again reaching out for wisdom because from beginning to end this motherhood has been hard.
And from the harsh beginning it has also been beautiful, from the moment I saw her still fused shut eyes struggle open against the odds to catch her first glimpse of the world outside of the womb she was still meant to be tucked inside to last night, when her lashes fluttered closed against my shoulder.
Every year the birds come and build a nest high in the rafters of our balcony, stowed away safe because mothers protect their babies. We watch rapt, me and her, faces pressed against the window as we count the twining of twigs, the number of bright blue speckled eggs, the yellow beaks opened wide at feeding time.
We walk onto the porch to see them broken, fallen out of the nest too soon for them to fly as the mother hovers with frantic bird cries and there it is again, this reflection of our story.
I pull on gloves and build a new nest and gingerly tuck in the downy feathered babies as a tiny voice pipes up behind me “Maybe God and da doctors can help my baby birdies, Mommy.”
Maybe they can.
We pray it as we rock to sleep.
I trace the edges of the scar that winds long around her back, the one from that day they cut into her heart and simultaneously sliced mine open as I sat anxious in a waiting room chair for doors to open with assurances that hers never stopped beating. It was meant to be a metaphor but truly I felt it as acutely as if I were the one whose skin met the scalpel and that is my motherhood, this discerning sense that connects us though the cord was long ago cut.
I have no idea what I am doing, this Bon Jovi style of mothering where I am just living on a prayer, but after so many hours spent sitting next to her tiny bedside when she was closer to there than here, I know for certain that I am grateful every single moment I have to look my little legacy of love full in the face and the honor of teaching her to fly.
And you count far more to him than birds – Matthew 6:26
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I am linking up with #fiveminutefriday, a community that participates in a creative writing prompt, this week’s being : grateful.
(I edited, which is kind of against the rules of the prompt but I blame my OCD ;))
(Monday is kind of a big day around here as I have an announcement that relates to all things motherhood and so I would love to invite you back at the beginning of the week to share in the joy)
