on motherhood

as i lie with babe beside me in his bassinet, i pray for sleep...for it to wash over me. for now i sleep with one eye open, ear to the cradle, brain prattling off the SIDS checklist, trying to reassure me that he is safe (no loose bedding, on his back, plenty of air circulation)... and as i ponder this loss--the loss of sleep and the fear of ultimate loss-- i think of my more selfish loss, too.

it is amazing how pregnancy prepares us for this sacrificial loss. i feel like for the better part of a year my body has been training me for loss. and here he is. and with every wave of emotion that rushes over me, every intense morsel of lovey goodness, the tide seems to take a little piece of the old me back with it. the girl (and yes, even a thirty-four i would still tend to view myself as a warped seventeen year old, a little reckless, a girl who would hoard love) without so many cares, whose life she had designed as such that she could go out on a figurative school night without fearing how she would feel in the morning...

love is funny this way. try as i might, i find it impossible to focus on the now, without looking to the past, to what i could have been until now, to how i could have loved my own mother more (as she made her way to the terminal i could think only of her sacrifice, and of the hundreds of times i had disappointed her or not loved her back). i think of the future: will he ever need me as much as he needs me now? will he ever know this love i have for him? should he?