Babysitting

12 December 2011 · Filed under Groceries

I had forgotten how precious and pure is the process of putting a baby to bed. How very different it is from a school-age child whose words and fears and wants often strip the fairy tale of its wonder.

After changing and dressing and placing him in his crib, it wasn’t the modern, fancy gadgetry of the nursery that captured my awe but my instinctual rubbing of the forehead, watching his eyelids flutter, all cozy and warm and wrapped in blankets with a favorite stuffy.

I started to cry. Out of happiness. Out of remembrance. Out of hope. Then admittedly a touch out of sorrow that my first-born son perhaps never had this peace, certainly not the amenities or luxury of secure consistency.

But mostly I felt joy because in my heart of hearts I know that I will be blessed once (twice?) more with being given life from my own.

And what a woman never forgets, what her body’s memory carries (yearns for?) forever, is the gentle weight of her child resting on her hip from birth onward. It becomes simply a natural tendency to rock and sway even if she’s just standing by the copy machine long after the child has grown up.