Bad Dreams

It's interesting to me how my views on life have changed in the last five years. Some of the biggest, worst, and most wonderful things have happened to me in the last five years of my life.

Take this book that I am reading. It's affected me. As a mother and daughter, I have conflicting emotions about the story. I am so mad at both the main character and her mom and yet I sympathize with both also. One thing is clear though and that is that our roles as parents (and sorry fathers), and moreover, as mothers is so key in the development of our children and how they treat their own children and those that they love after us. Every child has an inherent need to be loved by their parents and again, moreover, by their mother. Every child should be so loved and treasured.

Being a mother is the most heartbreaking thing I have ever endured...and my son is only two. There is nothing like the love, but the love is also the very thing that breaks me. Sometimes, I want to bottle it up; take the burden of it away from me until I know how to really appreciate and handle it justly. It's overwhelming...and yet so calming.

This morning, I was awakened by Roan again. He hardly ever does this. He was wimpering and then started crying. I went to his room and picked him up from his crib and laid with him on the twin bed in his room. I felt that something had scared him. He immediately stopped crying and I knew he no longer had any fear. He was chewing on his blanket and even though it was still dark, I knew he was looking at me. He rested his little hand on my cheek...and suddenly, my tiredness was forgotten and a blanket of peace fell over me. I can't explain the calm happiness that was in me.

I wanted to lay there with him until morning, but I knew that I didn't want to have to get up every morning to do this with him, so I picked him up, sang our song to him and then told him that I loved him as I put him back into this crib. Torn, I was sad to leave him and even sadder that I couldn't lay with his little warm body against mine until morning.

Back to the book, it frustrates me how the characters in the book just don't seem to know how to express their love for one another and yet it is obvious that that is all that is needed and then it's far too late to mend relationships. I fell asleep with the words on my mind. As a result, Roan was not the only person in our family who had a bad dream last night. I also had one about one the most meaningful relationships in my life. It's funny how dreams have the ability to magnify and bring to surface certain things you want to keep buried.

As I comforted my child, I didn't even realize that he was comforting me right back. Oh, motherhood, how do I do this right, when there is still so much of myself I need to deal with?