Monday, November 7, 2011

Child of my Womb

I sit beside her miniature bed.

I am a big, pregnant lady - belly swollen and skin stretched impossibly taut - sitting on a laughably small, white chair. There's a weight limit on that chair, but it's always held me for these nine months of weight gain, so I continue to sit next to her as she drifts off into sleep.

She likes her back to be scratched as she drifts. So I scratch it for her.

Her skin feels as thin as a balloon and underneath it are delicate bones. Like once when I felt a toy Yorkie and its quick, shallow breaths felt so fragile underneath the bones and soft fur as breakable as a hamster's.

Asleep now, her breaths are deeper and restful and slower. Her eyelids are shut together as softly as petals on her cheeks and I wonder where is she now? Somewhere I cannot follow, somewhere God takes her, takes all of us individually when we sleep.

She came from inside me - deep down in the dark unseen - her head once wedged between my pelvis, murky waters cushioning ears and eyes from sound and light. Somehow God put her together: she has skin, hair, miraculous eyes, impossible brain so intricate, ten fingers and ten toes. And she can laugh like I've never heard a person laugh before.

She started a baby with meconium poop from all the months inside my womb, and now she walks upright in the world and talks to us and when she sees me tired she says, "Mama, you lay down to sleep awhile." O, Child, when did you become so compassionate?

It's a brief time He's given to me with this child. I feel it falling out of my cupped hands like sand through the fingers. And I am reluctant to let it go.

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