My nose grazes your head. Your hair still only fuzz even at almost a year. A year. One whole year in just a short month and a few days. It has blazed by and left me feeling breathless, all out of breath and speechless. I whisper into the dark,
"Please slow down. Please? Just do me that one small favor. Slow. Down."
I weep silently for the mama I miss who must've spent nights much the same nestling me in her arm's crook begging me softly and uselessly to stay small. Whispering those same words into the dark. I don't think I've felt closer to my mama since she left this world. The kinship of motherhood being woven into my heart that is shared with all mamas everywhere in every space in time. I can see her sitting in my nursery. The back room off of my parent's bedroom. A glorified walk-in closet with hideous red carpet, crib that would double as a safety hazard these days with lead paint to and bars, decor to match an 80's born child. She isn't all that different than me. A mama heart holding a daughter's heart right there in her arms.
We weren't gifted the teen years. I didn't get to rage against her about makeup and boys. She flew heavenward just a month after my twelfth birthday. I've now lived more of my life without her than with her.
That is hard grace. The hardest kind I've ever known.
Often I think about what I would like to ask her if we could brew strong coffee and sit together with steaming mugs in hand. I fantasize about calling her to ask the tough questions and the just wondering questions. How much Tylenol should I give her? Do you think it is teething? How do I pray for him? What did you do when...? I imagine what we'd be like, mother and daughter, as adults.
I know that this little bright eyed girl will grow up all too fast. Everyone says so, the checkout girl at the grocery store, the nursery workers at church, the librarian, the mailman, the elderly neighbors...I've heard it a million times and I think...really? What parent needs to be told that it goes by fast? The nights can be long, but these years...they fly by at warp speed. One day I'll wake up and she'll be looking at me on eye level and I'll have to check the date to see if it is really possible. A girl turned woman overnight.
That is why I whisper to her in the dark. Slow. Down.
It is there in the black of her room that I realize something sweet and glorious. A glorious thing that only the passing of years can teach a motherless daughter who now mothers a daughter all her own. These years will pass fast and there is no way to harness the wild growing of a child, but there will never be a time that she is not my daughter. I pray I am granted long years of life to love her and every babe that finds rest in this mama's arms. We don't get that assurance. What I do know is that whether I'm here or not I am always her mama. God has given that to me. God's rich grace has made me a steward of life. He mothers through me. He gives her what she needs through me. I'm the conduit for grace in her life. She'll grow and change from here till eternity, but I'll always be where she came from.
The years will pass and it will ache at times to see her grow more independent with each passing day. I pray for peace in our relationship. Wisdom to navigate the rocky years of adolescence and a hope that her security will always be in the most secure place; Christ.
Really it is me who needs to slow down. I'm the one who often races through the day. Eyes distracted from her smiling grin, ears attuned to t.v. news rather than her babbling incoherent conversation, heart wrapped in fear rather than wrapped around her tiny finger. We can't be brokenhearted over our little ones moving on if we never stopped to stay in one place with them. I need to be with her and to let her know every step of this journey that she is my daughter.
I can see my mom nodding proud. Yes, yes, this is the truth! You, my girl, the one who cried deep in my arms night after night. Yes, you. You are my daughter even still. A daughter of the King who I was privileged to mother. I can hear God echoing her heart. Even if your mother and father forsake you...I WILL NOT. He can't. He doesn't. I can pass this own to her full and free.
You get to keep all the fullness of mothering. It doesn't leave you even when your children do.
She's never not the baby who slept peaceful and warm against my chest.
She's never not my daughter.
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