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Saturday, March 19, 2011

The Holy Road, Part II

I couldn't sleep last night, thinking about the last entry that went out about my son.  Things should not be left that way.  The sun should not go down with things in such a fuss.  My heart beats out of my chest somewhere downstairs.  I get up to find it.  To find him.  To sit by his sleeping form, and watch his beautiful face in slumber.  Thick, dark lashes spread nets on sea of pale cheeks.  Catching dreams.  When he was a baby, I would go into his room at night and watch him sleep.  Chubby arms curled under chest, legs tucked under bottom sticking up.  I loved looking at his mouth.  Full baby lips with nursing blister.  Breathing that heavenly breath mixed with the smell of breast milk.  I would stand there just shaking my head in wonder.  And that was before I met his Maker!

I creep down the stairs at midnight.  What is this child doing awake at midnight?  I feel the heat, but I press on for the prize. How often is he awake in the night?  I climb into his bed, glimpsing the moles that sit like two tiny drops of molasses beneath his right ear.  I hold him.  Close.  He lets me, and we don't speak.  For sparks.  I breathe in that boy and smell faintest manhood.   I wonder if this is the last time I will ever hold him like this, and  I think my heart will break into a million pieces.    Is that REALLY what lies behind this angst?  This anguish of soul?  This growing into man and out and away from me?  From my heart?  Is this what it is to be a mother? 

I've got two sons that have already been through this,  and when they emerge out the other side, they are birthed AWAY from me.  This is God's plan.  There is goodness in it.  There is only one baby, born to a mother, that will never leave my heart in pieces.   

And so all things come back to Him.  This Jesus.

Lying there holding my precious child, I am thankful.  Simply thankful.  I don't know what tomorrow will bring, but I allow myself this moment.  Arms full of eleven year old boy, and I am sure I have never loved him more.  I soak it all in.  Store it in the deep.  And thank God.

For the Holy Road.

Bernadette

1 comment:

  1. #16 A good long look at Isaac, Isaac, baby through the wood of the crib--inches away from his dear, sweet, chubby, sleeping baby face and hearing the innocence and purity and holiness of every breath received and given...received and given...received and given...and for Bernadette and her "eleven-year-old" who inspired the aforementioned gaze.

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