My heart is tender tonight.  I just tucked Mattie into his “own bed” for the first time (a futon mattress dragged into the corner of our room).  In his first few years of life he has spent the night in a variety of places, some stranger than others  — an infant car seat, a swing, a rocking bassinet, a co-sleeper — but most nights he has slept with us in our King size bed.  This is what has worked best for our family.  There was an earlier period when our mattress was on the floor and the futon was next to it, but Ken usually slept on it then. Our room is not large, and is essentially one giant bed with the two mattresses covering the floor.

As Mattie has been growing bigger we’ve talked about a bed of his own — still in our room, we’ve reassured him — but he hasn’t been interested.  I brought it up again last night, as we’d been waking each other up with all the tossing and turning on each of our parts, and this time he got excited about it.  The excitement carried through to today, and we spent the better part of the day cleaning and re-arranging.  He just fell asleep in his very own bed for the first time, and I’m tearful.  While it is a change that will likely be good for all of us, there is grief too.  She accompanies joy, change, growth.  They all reside in my heart space together tonight.

What follows is a poem that I wrote a few months back about sleeping with Mattie.  It feels appropriate that tonight is the night I finally share it…

 

It is the middle of the night

and I wake to feel his little foot

curling into the crease where my thigh meets my hip.

It nestles in and rests there

while we both fall

back to sleep.

 

Later, in the wee hours of the morning,

I feel his toes exploring the space under

my left shoulder blade.

He is lying horizontally

across the expanse of our bed

with his head resting near his papa’s.

This is about the time when the  l-o-n-g,

s-l-o-w process of waking up begins,

and while he flip-flops over me from one side to the next,

I squeeze my eyes shut tight and silently pray-hope-wish-with-all-my-might

that he settles back in for just…a bit…longer.

 

A few minutes later,

(my silent pleas unanswered),

he sits up and looks around through eyes half-open

until his gaze lands on me.

 

Momma…located.

I take a deep breath and sigh a tired sigh,

as I accept my fate and surrender to whatever might come next

(sweet snuggles and stories?

an onslaught of instant demands?

one never knows…).

 

My boy scoots over to me and rests his head

against mine,  then draws up his knees and tucks himself up tight

under the alcove of my chin, momentarily.  

I breathe in his sweet,  satisfying, oh-so-familiar

baby-boy-child smell.

 

He pulls away only to nuzzle his head,

then his cheek, against my cheek —

the way a kitten might nuzzle its momma.

 

While I am melting in the blissful sweetness of it all,

he tops it off with a kiss — planted on my cheek — and then

(the grand finale of this first act of the day)

he whispers softly, “I love you, momma.”

 

I am reduced to a puddle of love.

This is it, I think.  This is what matters most in all the world.

I squeeze him tight, and tell him I love him too.

 

This kind of love,

multiplied,

could heal this world.

I just know it.