I remember…
My mother used to say…
“At night I would stroke
your forehead
And send you to sleep..”
And I notice
Amid all the sound and fury
And protest
As the last tears are
Squeezed from eyes
(Including my own)
When everything has been tried
And I sit alone
In chaos
My own child
Closing sleepy long lashes
With each stroke
This is a gift
This caress of my mother
And her mother
It will be mine long after I have gone
Each stroke
A brush with memory
“My patience, resolutions and beliefs are tested to the limits – sometimes daily.”*
Right at this moment one of my challenges is the constant, tuneless whistling from my elder son. When my boys were babies it was getting them to sleep or trying to figure out why they were crying. On any given day now, it might be squabbling, fighting, teasing, screaming, shouting or rudeness. Who’d be a parent? We might well question ourselves after the event, but we can’t very well put them back! Just how we find those inner resources, how we constantly demand more of ourselves, how we keep marching up that hill with a smile on our face and gladness in our heart at the sight of our ‘babies’ is one of life’s mysteries.
* © from Being Mummy by Anne‑marie Taplin published April 2007