There is no clock in my room at the summer house, not even an electrical outlet. It’s one of those undetermined witching hours between midnight and dawn.  I am drowsy but not asleep, struggling with the wicked combination of jet lag and a brain that has the propensity to buzz at the most inconvenient times. Finally, after hours of tossing and turning, I’ve reached that hazy sweet spot where rest is inevitable.

The cry comes then.

And I am awake, in the immediate way of all mothers roused by a piercing cry from one of their babies.  I hear pain in her voice, or maybe fear. I stumble in the dark. She is just next door but there is a hallway to navigate and toys strewn across the bedroom floor.

I reach the ancient single cot she sleeps on and see immediately that she is crying and writhing and trembling a bit, but not truly awake.

Nightmare.

I slide between her sheets and mold my body around hers.  The tremors stop.  A few more whimpers escape and then those too are settled. Her breath returns to normal.  I am left wondering, as my heart flows out of me to surround her, how much longer will I be the magic balm that soothes all?

Motherhood bequeaths countless superpowers.  I can vanquish demons and chase away boogiemen and mend wounds and settle feuds and soothe fears and calm nightmares.  Just a touch or a hug or a whispered “hush wee girlie, mama’s here” in the middle of the night and equilibrium is restored.  It’s a magic bit of sorcery, born of the alchemy between parent and child.

But we are approaching tenuous years, she and I.  Just months away from ten, she rides these liminal spaces between childhood and adolescence, innocent of what is to come.  She is still far more little girl than the enigmatic teenager she will be in just a few short years. But already, lying here curled around her, my head is only slightly above hers and my feet reach only slightly below. I was taller than my mother by twelve. Will she be the same?

In the pale glow of the moon hanging low outside the bedroom window I can just make out the light dusting of freckles that covers her nose. She squirms a bit and settles in against me.  Her thumb makes its way to her mouth; a residual baby habit she just can’t shake at bedtime.

She smells like childhood country summers; salt water, sweat, fresh air, fertile earth, cut grass.  The scent arouses a cellular memory of my own summers here by the shore and I breathe it in, knowing that this time is finite and infinitely precious.

How many more summers will I be her magic balm?  How much longer will my touch or voice or kiss be all that she needs to settle her heart or her fears or her body?  How soon until her troubles get bigger and deeper than can be healed by climbing in her bed late at night and offering simple comfort?

My girlie and I have had a connection from the beginning.  A way of seeing each other that defies explanation.  Our hearts never fully disconnected from our time in shared space.  Even in my deepest anger or most fiery irritation I feel her with a depth unparalleled, and she feels me as well. It is our biggest challenge and our most profound gift.  Will it be enough to help us navigate the years to come?

I pull her closer to me, and lean in to kiss her temple, breathing her deep into my soul.

All I can do is hope.

I have a mama’s heart.

It may have something to do with the two girls who lie now in their rooms just down the hall from where I sit tonight pecking away on my keyboard. The older, stuffy nose and red swollen eye be dammed, is stealing a last few moments lost in the pages of Diary of A Wimpy Kid.  The younger, having worn herself out with multiple water and music and nightlight and hug requests, is finally asleep.

They are the center.  The space inside from which all else orbits and evolves.  They are my delight, and my frustration, my deepest peace and my most morbid terror.  They are every overused cliche and every brutal truth. They are the root of my soul, the poetry of my heart, the cadence of my life.  In them and through them I am filled and emptied and broken and rebuilt.

Yes, I have a mama’s heart.

But it’s not just them.  A mama’s heart is not just birthing a baby and changing diapers and car pools and homework and dance recitals.  It’s the heart of all of us, man or woman, parent or child.  In the spaces where we connect, where we love, where we are one.  I call it a mama’s heart, because that is what I know.   But really, it is the healing force, the breath that flows, the purity of love and spirit that reminds us that we must all nurture, and be nurtured- if we are to grow.

I write tonight, not with intention of crafting perfect sentences or the desire to create finely tuned phrases.   There will be no editing and second guessing and ripping apart what flows organically.   No, tonight I’m feeling these words onto the screen, weeping them out of my fingertips and onto the blank white space in front of my eyes. I write from the ache in my chest and the salty tears that cloud my vision.   I write from the touch of my firstborn’s arms around me and the sound of her breathless voice as told about the super cool game she played in PE.  I write from the feel of my baby girl as she curls her body into mine and the irrepressible giggle that is only silenced by anger or sleep.  I write from the knowledge that there is nothing that I wouldn’t do, and the knowledge that even that may not be enough -  that there will surely be moments where it won’t be nearly enough.

Yes, I write from a mama’s heart.

And with a mama’s heart comes a veil of empathy through which all is seen and measured.  With a mama’s heart comes the inability to experience heartache from distance.  With a mama’s heart comes the knowledge, soul deep, that every moment is full of beauty and blessings and potential, and yet – is just a breath or a step or a decision away from the most abject chasm of loss imaginable.

This week, here in Arizona, the news hits close to home.  Terror and grief and confusion mingle with blame and rhetoric and vitriol.  And beyond the politics and the heroism and the unanswerable questions, there are the people who will be forever changed by this day.

And as always, my own mama’s heart goes immediately and eternally to the mothers.

The mother who, on 9/11 – while from my sofa I watched as planes collided and towers fell and rubbed my belly, praying that my daughter would stay safe inside – was just a few hours south, pushing her baby girl into a world forever changed, and who now must live without her precious daughter in a world forever changed once more.  The mother who instinctively threw her teenage daughter against a wall and took not one, not two, but three bullets without moving from her position of protective cover.  The mother of two and grandmother of three who died that day, despite her husband’s attempts to shield her from the bullets.

And the mother of the man who did this unspeakable thing.  She must, I think, have held him and rocked him to sleep.  She must have dried his tears and kissed his owies and held his hand as he crossed the street.  She must have quietly tiptoed into his room as he slept, and felt, with a heart full to bursting, that there is nothing that she wouldn’t do to give him everything in the world.  No matter what happened within their family between then and now, she must have loved him with a mama’s heart.  And right now, that mama’s heart must be shattered.

I am reminded that the world we live in is both solicitously gentle and unfathomably ruthless all at once.  And that we can never know what life holds for us, or for our children.  We can do our best.  We can provide every ounce of love, feed them only locally produced organic food, drive the safest cars on the safest roads.  We can set boundaries and curfews and not let them date until they are 27.  We can take them to church and teach them to meditate lovingkindness and make sure they hand in their homework on time.  We can send them bravely out into the world and tuck them safely into bed at night.   We can lecture and teach and guide and pour every ounce love in our hearts into every single moment of their lives.  But we cannot predict.  We cannot guarantee.  We cannot control.

Yes, I have a mama’s heart.  And right now, my mama heart weeps.

I’m on my way to bed, but I leave the hall light on for a moment to tiptoe into her room.  Every night I do this right before bed, sneak into their rooms one last time, my light kiss on the head a prayer to the universe to keep them always safe.

On impulse, this night, I climb into her bed and curl my body around her sleeping form.  Her long legs are tangled in the sheets and her thumb has just fallen from her mouth, a little girl habit held onto only at bedtime.   I press my lips to her hair and breathe deeply.  She smells of chlorine and sweat and little girl summer and the plea leaps, unbidden, into my mind.

I have broken so many things along this journey. Please, please don’t let her be one of them.

And for the millionth time I make a silent promise to be better, more patient, more loving, every last little thing she deserves.  My only hope that she will find herself whole at the end.

Bella and Julie in July 2007: No matter how much they fight, there is a connect between sisters...

Teachable moments.  As parents we know to look out for those fleeting instances where life and learning come together effortlessly.   A trip to the grocery store teaches colors and counting to a toddler, a donation to the food bank brings opportunity to discuss poverty and hunger.

Life swirls around us willy-nilly and when we pay attention and grasp the lessons as they come, we have a chance to pass them on before the moment is lost.  There’s an underlying assumption that we – with the benefit of advanced years and accompanying wisdom – will be the teachers, while our children are the ones being taught.

~~~

When we wake up from a deep sleep  there is often a moment where our sleeping souls and our waking souls hover separate for a moment before settling into our body.   I’ve felt it, that moment poised on the brink between dreams and daylight, just waiting for all of me to fall back to earth.  But there are days when the meshing doesn’t quite happen right, things don’t line up like they should, and we wake up feeling the effects.

~~~

Julie is miserable from the moment her eyes open this morning.  She tantrums and clings and cries and whines her way through the morning routine.   Nothing is right, nothing tastes right or fees right or sounds right. But we rush through the routine of dressing and eating and lunch packing and teeth brushing, and there’s no time to do anything but drag her miserable little self along for the ride, gritting our teeth as we go.

8 O’Clock (ten minutes from the time we need to leave) finds her lying in the floor of our hallway, kicking her legs and screaming bloody murder again (and again and again).   I hit my overload point, where frustration bubbles out of me and over onto anyone in the immediate vicinity.

Julie, if you can’t stop screaming I’m going to have to put you in your room!

Bella is walking down the hallway at that point and stops to look me in the eye.

B: Mama, don’t put her in her room.  You’ll just make it worse, she’ll get more upset and everything will take longer.  Ugh, timeout – it’s such a… grownup*  idea.  You know, it’s not like what she wants is not important.  It IS important.

J: What does she want Bella? I don’t know, she’s been crying about everything since she woke up.

B: She just wants you to hear her.

~~~

And so we all slow down, and I sit in the hallway with both my girls, my gurus, my teachers, and I take a moment to hear them both, to learn from them, grateful that my oldest girl knew not to let a teachable moment pass unnoticed.  Grateful that she took the time to pass on that wisdom to me. Grateful that I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t hear it.

And then we load up the car – daughters and mother and backbacks and lunch boxes and slightly lighter hearts – and head on our way, my teachers and I.

~~~

What do any of us want, really, but to speak and be heard, to exist and be accepted?  Even cranky, even ugly, even when we wake up on the wrong side of the bed, even when we’re pushed to our limits by things that nobody else understands.  We all want someone to hear us.

It IS important.

~~~

*Please note: the word grownup must be read in a tone dripping with disgust and incomprehension – as if grownups were a separate, and not entirely intelligent, species that she is forced to deal with.