Reunion

Last week the big kids were gone all week and it was just me and little Peevers. I was looking forward to spending some quality time with her, enjoying her fleeting babyhood. I know she could use a little "only child time". There is a unique quality to the way I think of her, knowing that she is my last baby. She is my final nursling. She will be last baby to look up at me with deep joy and contentment as she snuggles into my arms and settles against my breast. And although I am lucky enough in my work to get frequent access to tiny babes who I cuddle and adore as I check their wee spines and nerve systems for subluxation and cranial malpositioning, one cannot recapture the rapture of your own tiny baby.

A mother's body remembers her babies...the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul.

It's the last one though that overtakes you. I can't dare say I loved the others less; together they were my first issue. I took one deep breath for every step they took away from me. That's how it is with the firstborn, no matter what kind of mother you are...rich, poor, frazzled half to death or sweetly content. A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world.

But the last one; the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after...oh, that's love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she's gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent of moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She's the one you can't put down.

My baby, my blood, my honest truth; entreat me not to leave thee; for whither thou goest I will go. Where I lodge, we lodge together. Where I die, you will be buried at last.

--The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

I went home this weekend to visit my family one last time and to see my youngest sister's firstborn. She told me with awe how she didn't want to be separated from her son for even a few moments. Her husband offered to hold the baby, who was fast asleep, while she went to take a much needed nap. But she protested that she wouldn't be able to sleep without her baby beside her.

How proud and glad I was that she was able to hear her maternal instinct. Her mommy instinct was telling her loud and clear that to be without her baby would be like being without her arm. "It is like, I would trust my family to watch my arm and that nothing bad would happen to it, but I would just prefer to have my arm with me."

I was feeling somewhat guilty over the course of my week as I spent little to no time worrying about the big kids or really even thinking about them. I had such a busy week with myriad projects and responsibilities to finally take care of. I knew the kids were safe and happy and I simply put them out of my mind and enjoyed the extra time I garnered in their absence. And I was feeling a bit like a bad Mama for my ability to let them go so blithely.

Last night I tucked them into bed with care, lavishing multiple kisses and hugs upon them and stroking their long limbed "big kid"-ness. They seem so huge and grown up after a week with just my nursling baby.

During the night Gabe woke me asking me to take him downstairs to pee. "I need you to carry me" he demanded plaintively as he stumbled about in the dark. I carried my big boy downstairs and leaned against the bathroom wall while he peed. He is my firstborn and he will be going to kindergarten this year. I will send him off with his backpack and school supplies and spend entire days without seeing his face and hearing his sweet little voice.

As I picked him up to bring him back up to his bed, he wrapped his arms around my neck, sighing into my hair with pleasure and wrapped his legs around my waist, loose limbed in complete trust that his mama would put him back into his cozy bed. He was already asleep as I climbed the stairs.

I was struck with the realization that no matter how big he becomes he is still as much a part of me as my arm and as precious to me as any limb. No matter how big and independent he becomes, I will always feel right with him nestled (overflowing) in my arms. Even when he doesn't need me, he still feels most right and content when he is reunited with my flesh, just as I am with his. He and Quin and his nursling baby sister are all a part of me.

And now that all my limbs are reunited and my life is three times as crazy, I am somehow, finally at peace once again.