14/52 | That Mothering Ache

     

Their love for each other overwhelms me to no end.

There is something about mothering that opens your eyes. I know that sounds tired and cliché. What I’m talking about is something a little different. As a young child, as an aspiring adult, our self-indulgence and somewhat narcissistic nature allow a certain haze to hang about us. We venture through our life never really acknowledging or caring for the lack of permanency it holds. Seldom do we stop to really see, the haze instead swirling through the rationality of our minds, never fully allowing us to embrace the fleeting beauty that is life. To awaken.

We live. We die.

And too often as humans we fight so hard for tomorrow, raging against the torrents of being here, there, doing this now, getting things done quick! We infrequently take pause. We disengage from being present.

I feel this change with mothering. Oh the beauty of mothering. Small fingers, small toes, dirty feet and aching cries, cries that tug at you, cries that warm your bosom as they flow from their eyes to your heart. We as mothers know a love that is greater in strength than any feat imaginable, though there is a paining payoff for the knowing of this love.

We live overwhelmed with the now. In vast contrast to our former selves we are ever present. We humbly nod our heads in recognition of the mortality of this life. We hold our babes closer; we commit their scent to memory and drown ourselves in them. For as mothers we are confronted with the possibility of it all escaping us, of being out of reach in moments. As mothers we ache.

Yesterday as I got ready for work, I had an ominous feeling take hold. It was nothing and for no real reason. Just an irksome itching in the deeper parts of myself that told me to hold my babes that little bit longer. To make sure they heard me say ‘I love you’, before I left them. Later that day a child passed away at work. It was enough to shake the darkest parts of me alive, enough to make me stop and think. Yes if the world, My world stopped today! In this moment, my children knew.

My love for them is big, it is huge. But we are small and not immune to the mortality of this world. And so for all the hugeness of my love, for all the greatness and centering mothering brings there is that pay off. So I ache, every day for my babies, that beautiful, raw mothering ache, which stops the world and pulls at your heart.

We live. We die.

Linking in with Jodie and the 52 Project, aswell as The Whole Hearted Journal, mothering as it is.