These tender nights.
This soul that whispers,
weary as can be.
Such love shines
upon the pavement of life.
Darlings of mine.
How they take this heart,
how they shatter the light,
that I might be the stars.
I am tidying the mess my three children have made. Motherhood has broken me, today. It has hurt me, it has hurt them, and all because I have failed to be perfect. And so have they.
But as I am down on my hands and knees, moving toys from here to there, I understand that I am in two places at once. I am here, among the chaos, among the evidence that three uncontrollable children live here.
And I am also seven years ago, when I paced around the living room, my stomach contracting with a baby that I would never actually get to meet.
Tonight, I know the gift of my children, despite the chaos they sometimes bring.
Tonight, I understand the beautiful silence of that night seven years ago. The same silence as tonight. A silence that asked me, then, to be fully there with my baby because we deserved that time to know each other.
A silence that lives imperfectly, now, for my children.
Each and every day that I live.
For them.
May they find the hours
of my love for them
strewn upon these coloured pages.
May their names shine with my love,
and may their eyes light
with the truth of all they are.
May these hours,
and these pages dear,
show my children that love is pure
beyond thinking.
Love is…
love
is.
Motherhood has opened my heart in both expected and unexpected ways. It’s taught me that I never truly knew concepts such as shame or guilt before, or responsibility, or disappointment, or sorrow.
And I often get down on myself when I don’t get it right. When I snap at them for being children. When I’m too lazy to be the Mother I know I can be to them.
Then there was today. Today when a situation arose that put my parenting skills to the test, and they were met and exceeded, to my absolute delight.
I have to celebrate this beautiful victory with all of my heart. I have to love myself as much as I love my babies and say: Mum, you did a great job.
I am not perfect.
But today, I was a great Mum.
Who knows what I’ll be tomorrow.
I sang about fairy lights as we drove. I remember. My tiny head bobbling about in the back seat while Mum drove us through the darkness to her weekly game of basketball.
‘I love your beautiful songs, Brooke.’ It was a line she’d repeat all the way up until I left home; the warbling six year old I was never did stop making up songs.
Fairy lights. They really were beautiful in the distance. Just window lights shining from houses on the horizon, a lot of them. So many it looked like a sea of twinkling stars dancing beside us as we drove.
I’m not in the most peaceful of places. Looking after a newborn is not the easiest of things, and it’s especially difficult when your body begins to misbehave. Mine has done so spectacularly of late, many thanks to all the regular post birth complaints. Crunch, screech, ache, sob. But life can’t stop because I am in pain.We cannot pause our children, we cannot pause the laundry and the cooking that must be done in order to keep us all happy and healthy.
Fairy lights. I needed something to get me through the chaos and through these achy, sleepless days. And here I am, typing away, every now and then gazing up at our ornamental bookshelf, tired but grateful for the unexpected burst of creativity that found me earlier. Fairy lights. I’ve strung some up around the bookshelf frame and it is the most beautiful thing to stare at them and just…let them take me somewhere.
I love my children beyond it all and I am grateful to even have a home and things to care for. But sometimes I need a breath. Sometimes I need to raise my head above the water and find one of the joys of my soul waiting to soothe me.
Fairy lights. Beauty bringing me back to peace, once more.
Ahh. There it is.
There it is.
It’s funny, isn’t it. How we zone in on the things that happen in life that signal an ending of something and the beginning of something else.
They roll on in, these momentous happenings, and soon they pass: although we do wish we could cling to the beauty of them. We do wish we could hold on to their quiet precious hands just that little bit longer than they allow us to. So we can breathe them in. So we can close our eyes and know something bigger than ordinary is actually happening to us.
That’s a lot of waffling just to get to the point isn’t it, my lovely bloggy friends. And yet I’m certain you all know me well enough to understand that waffling is my way of holding on to the precious moments of my life a little longer than the average human might.
So.
Without further ado…
It’s a girl.
A beautiful, darling, button nose girl: isn’t that just the loveliest thing?
She’s been flip-side of my belly for a week and a day. It’s been a foggy time. A time where my hormones have screamed abnormal things and my rational side has begged to make it all feel a little more normal than that. But I am perfectly okay, and that is just about all I am asking of this post birth phase.
I am being so, so, so well cared for by a husband I love even brighter the second time around. I am kept busy giggling at my other children who tumble around, daily, and so often remind me of tiger cubs at play (especially when the tiger mum nudges them away and gently snaps at their tumbling bodies, in order to pull them into line.)
Life is both foggy and good, for now.
And to me, that is perfect.
Perfect.
Just the way it was meant to be.
There it was, quietly mine.
A moment of the greatest love: a Mother’s love.
My love.
For them.
And I know they tire me senseless,
and I know I wish them away
(too often for my heart to understand)
but they are the precious hands
I long to hold
a lifetime.
Those two small ones.
I choose their little arms, forever.
I’m sitting at a table with one kid beside me, and another kid beside the kid beside me. My kids. Precious and two (although given they are six and three years old— it sometimes feels as though there are ten of them. Bless.) 🙂
We’ve just watched the most beautiful, beautiful show thanks to the wonderful program my little boy’s school is remotely running for school. It’s a fish thing. A deep blue sea thing, to be exact, and this week we are learning all about the beauty and majesty of the deep blue sea. I say we are learning because it seems there is quite a lot I don’t know about the ocean. For example, I’ve only just learned that, not only is coral alive, it also gives birth to real-life coral babies! Mind blown.
It just goes to show how sound asleep I’ve been for the majority of my life, sticking to the lanes I already know. The beautiful news is: there is a brighter shine to my perspective now that I’ve opened my eyes. The world seems magical and alive, again, more than ever before.
There is a small problem. There are so many wondrous, exciting, beautiful pathways to explore, and yet there is the lingering truth that finding time (and energy) to explore them remains a challenge. I’m part parent, part human with desires of my own. I’m not sure I’ll ever find the balance it takes to successfully master both at the same time, but I’ll never stop trying.
Let the life within me swell from the excitement of possibility, and let these sweet babes of mine feed off the shine in their hopeful Mum’s eye.
Life is beautiful, and mine I will use to explore as I will.
Home is in this house.
The quiet of my love for them.
The dreams of my essence, racing into a fresh new world.
Home, you are my refuge.
Family, you are my home.
Never forget, little Sun.
You are so loved.
brooke-cutler.com 