I tiptoe carefully up the stairs, the soft glow of well-worn Christmas lights casting shadows on fingerprinted walls. At the top I pause, debating whether it’s worth the risk of waking them to peer upon their sleeping faces.
In the end, I relent, knowing that these rare glimpses of peace are what keep my mother’s heart going, knowing all too well that each night is a passage of time away from these walls, this bed, this home where I can keep them close to me.
Into their room I creep, not unlike the bearded, red-suit clad and present-laden figure that haunts their current dreams. At the side of their bed I stop — and gaze.
Faces still in slumber, whirling blonde hair still, blankets knotted, and features composed. I feel my heart swell, because maybe like the Grinch, impatience and busyness of days renders it two sizes too small. But here, in this moment, all is calm and I love them fierce.
But with that love comes almost immediately a most unwelcome guest that grips my heart in icy fear. My stomach turns, I catch my breath, and although I am standing, I feel like I am falling, falling, falling.
Away I shoo the fear, willing its wispy tentacles to stop their assault but she is a persistent foe and I am weakened by her advances. What if, she whispers in my ear, you were not the parent to be gazing upon sleeping faces? What if the stillness of the night was to last forever? Beds empty, blankets never to be filled, a heart forever broken?
I gasp for air, clawing my way to the surface through the murky darkness that threatens to take me down. In my mind flashes the names of all the mothers I know who have faced the fear that lurks in every mother’s heart — Lauren, Theresa, Emilee, Marie.
They must have all felt it, this fear, the fear that must be fought against every day, the fear that all we know and hold close will someday be taken away. They must have whispered a weak protest against it as I do now — no, not me, not us, not today.
Except right now, it is someone, somewhere, not someday.
I’ve seen them all, watched the bravery that steels their bodies, the smiles they force upon their features, but it’s always there — the eyes that betray, the eyes allowing a glimpse into a soul never to be mended, eyes that are deadened by a soul forever shredded apart, a wound that will always throb in agony. A pain so great to contemplate that even words cause tears to tumble down my cheeks.
And although we fight valiantly against it, the truth is, nothing I do can protect the little hearts that beat between these walls. Nothing but the bonds of love holds us together with the promise of a future together.
Nothing but a hope, a whisper in the night, and a prayer of please God, not my babies.
Image via j&j brusie photography