Miracles

Donovan came downstairs an hour ago, after a few hours of sleep and right at my bedtime.   He almost instantaneously fell back asleep in my lap, and I haven't managed to get up and put him back to bed so that I can get some sleep.  I sit here, finding useless drivel and a few pages of interest on the internet, all as an excuse to keep listening to him breathing and feeling his weight and warmth.  I look at him to examine his eyelashes and lips, and try to burn his four year old image into my memory.

In response to last Friday's tragedy, a woman posted a lovely piece on her blog that details in beautiful prose the eccentricities of six year olds, explaining in part why we as mothers find ourselves mourning these children we didn't know.  Reading it, I had tears streaming down my face, not only for the mothers who lost children, but for all moms.  This post in particular made me cry because, while most mothers will not lose their six year olds to death, we will, if we are lucky, lose our six year olds to age seven.

These moments are precious and fleeting, and I hope that, when every mother is posting in her blog or on Facebook to "hold your child a little tighter," it is not only out of fear for the slight chance that she could lose her child, but also in acknowledgement of how very precious every day is that we have together with our loved ones.  Any of us could die prematurely, but more than that, should I live one hundred years, each of my children living to bury me, these moments will have been equally as important.  We are all so valuable to each other.  And we all change and grow - but not with the speed and wonder of children.

Donovan has slid off me now.  He is on the couch, with one leg draped across my legs, the other tucked up near his tuchis with his arm wrapped around it, and the other arm up across my belly.  His head is tilted back, and I keep glancing over to watch his pulse in his neck for a few seconds at a time.

He can't say "sk."  He likes to aks me questions.  He loves his Spiderman maks.  He has a book that has a snuck in it.  In addition to aksing me questions, he likes to make comments.  "Mommy?  I love you.  That's a commint."  "Mommy?  I have a commint.  I sink my sisters should come home now."  (His TH comes out as S, which is fair because Kesenia's S comes out as TH.)  He likes skin contact with his hands, primarily wrapped around the back of my neck.  His hugs and cuddles are wholehearted and often uncomfortably enthusiastic.  He seems to have no idea that he has grown in the past three years, so that he snuggles and roughhouses like a golden lab that thinks he's a chihuahua.

He is the most ordinary boy and the most extraordinary.  Every child is the most extraordinary.

No matter how many births I attend or how old my children get, I continue to marvel at the miracle of their breath and pulse.  The miracle of life, of being, its transience, its mystery, how all the evidence I can observe of their lifeforce while they sleep has absolutely nothing to do with who they are.  How much their existence means to me that I could never have imagined before them.

Yesterday, he asked me where he was before he was in my belly.  Oh my sweet.  In my heart, in an ovary, tucked in a corner of the galaxy where spirits come into being, with all those who have come before us and all those who will come after us, everywhere, nowhere, in another dimension where all that exists is love.