Sweet Moments

I wonder why I miss her so when I am away? Is it normal to miss her squiggly, wiggly, fun-to-hug body when I get to be with her all the time? I feel so grateful for this as I lay on the massage table for the reflexology, head rub purchased long before her birth, a treat to myself.

A babysitter has her now. I know she is okay and yet in that moment of missing, I want to be with her. I breathe through it, knowing it is breaks like this that make me happy too, breaks like this that make me stronger, breaks like this that awaken my insular world of caretaker and allow me to take care of me too.

I breathe in and the energy swirls around me and the missing shifts from one of longing to one of gratitude—grateful for those moments when I get to hold her, witnessing her little fingers curled around my own, celebrating her jack-o-lantern grin and silly antics. Grateful for just as many special moments with my son, for holding him as a baby to cuddles and intimate moments now, sweet stories told with him in the back seat as we drive together, he now a big boy. Sweet moments, all of them, the harrowingly difficult trespasses of motherhood and the tender love shared.

And sweet moment too is this. I breathe in and out, the acknowledgement of missing making the present moment all the more sweet somehow. For not too long from now, I know this one will be missed as well. And as the massage therapist rubs my brow with a brush stroke and pulls my hair oh, so gently, rubbing my scalp into sublime relaxing bliss, I am lost in the sweetness of now.