Tuesday / April 21 / 2015
Innate awakenings
It wasn’t the thunder that woke me at 2:23am. It was mother’s intuition. As if I’d gotten a full night’s sleep, I was up. Ready, willing and able to take on whatever monsters lay in wait.
This wasn’t the first time I awoke in the darkness of night with instinct to check on my loves.
Me with my son Grant.
“I’m so sorry,” my son would implore whenever he got sick. Gazing up at me with those deliciously big brown eyes — the ones he wouldn’t grow into until he was nearly an adult — he didn’t realize he wasn’t a burden. On the contrary, by allowing me to dole out forehead caresses and top-of-the-head kisses, he was gifting me with motherhood.
“I need my Mommy!,” my 23-year-old daughter bemoaned as she readied to birth her baby boy. As I took her hand, I looked into her drained face and encouraged, “This is it, my sweet girl. You’re about to meet your son.”
She needed more. The epidural had long since worn off and she was exhausted, hurting and weary. “Mom, I can’t do this,” she beseeched through the tears she wouldn’t let fall. Mustering my most stern (perhaps, a tad loud) impassioned voice,
Me with my daughter Brittany and her son Brody Joseph.
I reminded my baby about to have a baby, “You are the strongest person I know. You will do this because you were born for this very moment and I was born to help you with it.”
Fifteen minutes later, we welcomed Brody Joseph into the world and my sweet girl became, “Mommy” in her own right.
Just last week, I found my 40-something head laying in the lap of my beautiful Momma as she stroked my forehead and assured me everything in this big beautiful (sometimes scary) world will be okay. Ahhh, so this is where I learned it! It’s innate. And, it matters not whether you share each others’s blood.
Tonite though, it was all about my Facebook-famous “Baby Zeke”. My now 7-year-old Miniature American Eskimo Dog was precisely where he always is at two o’clock in the morning; resting his precious little self on his silken pillow in the center of my bed. [Side note: totally normal for a dog to have his own silken pillow at the head of the bed. Not spoiled at all. #denial]
Zeke comforted by his ThunderShirt.
Even before hearing the thunder, I could tell he was shaken. On cue, the rumble which followed prompted me to get Zeke’s ThunderShirt. He looked at me with grateful eyes knowing relief was coming. He tolerated the ripping sound of velcro and like magic, was consoled by the ‘hugs’ he received from the ThunderShirt and his Mommie.
We cuddled till the nasty thunder subsided and now, as you can see, he’s back on his silken pillow. Comforted and resting peacefully. All is right in his wold once again and my heart is full.
Mothers don’t long for our children to be frightened, sick or in pain. When they are, the time on the clock matters not. All that matters, at any age, is knowing, “Mommy’s right here.”
Happy Mother’s Day to all who love through a Momma’s Heart. We notice and it matters. Thank you! May 10, 2015 is Mother’s Day.
Leave a Reply