5 Minute Friday: Comfort

It's Friday! Put on your flip flops, pour some sweet tea and throw caution to the wind for just 5 glorious minutes! Join all of us who live on the wild side each Friday through our writing.

Here is my 5 minutes on "Comfort"

Her body stretched broad and right down the middle to hold two babies. She stretched her arms wide to hold us through night fevers, busted knees and bruised egos. She was a shelter. She stood firm on a foundation made of hope even when the winds of our family blew and nearly knocked all the life right out of us.

She was and is always my mama though seventeen years flown homeward.

I'm a motherless daughter with nearly two decades of experience.

I hear my wee girl down the hall and she has been a shadow of her spirited self these past two days fighting a yucky stomach bug. I've scooped and I've rocked and it is in these moments that my own arms stretched wide and long into the night mama comes near.

I learned this mama-ing thing somewhere. I learned it from my own heart and body stretched mama.  I learned it in the still of the night with my head rested on her chest. I learned it in my drive way from her hands as she treated bicycle war wounds. I learned it from bowl after bowl of Sunday night soup.

I learned it from my mother still alive and well in me.