Niagra Love

Today is one those days,
Those days when I wake up and my affection is Niagra Falls.

Where are my children and my grandbaby?
I must spend every hour, every minute with them.
I wonder,
Have they seen the sunrise?
Are some of them still in bed,
Snuggled deep in blankets
with tousled hair,
warm and sleepy,
smelling sweetly
like the towels one pulls from the dryer?

The day has claimed my soul.
Every moment, every hour has been reserved.
Each one belongs to others.
It is for me to walk to each checkpoint and do the job required,
Then I will get home around 9:30 pm.
But I am not unhappy.

I am too much in love with a shy ten year old who told me, while at home, that he would not, under any circumstances,  participate in the Spelling Bee he qualified for, but stepped up to the plate when it was time, challenging himself and not faltering, to make it to third place.
The one who likes me to scratch his back at night but makes me promise not to tell this to his playmates when they come over.

I am in love with the 20 year old who works hard and always has for his work ethic is as solid as granite. He needs his mother, even though he is an adult and does not need his mother.

I am in love with the sixteen year old who is the giant of the house, the 6’2″ teddy bear who still lays his head on my shoulder when I’m driving, and calls me “Shakespeare” because of the way I speak, not realizing that his giftings lie in the same area; he speaks as creatively as he writes.
How does he not hear himself?

I am in love with the twenty-two year old who lived out of state for three years and came home when it was time to build a family, and her husband,  now my son, who has joined our beautiful broken mix of fruits and nuts yet has not withheld his heart from us.
She is song embodied.
He is affection in action.

And I am in love with their baby.
The softest dumpling grandbaby with the hazel eyes who always greets me with a smile.

It’s as if he knows that his mother is a piece of me; therefore, he is a piece of me too –
A living testament of the most beautiful things in life.
He is my whisper into tomorrow,
Proof that life goes on living,
Even when we take our place in the yesterdays.

Love like water flows from my heart,
through my veins,
and out from my fingertips
to reach the lonely today.

The girl at school that cried herself to sleep last night,
The boy who doubts himself – as we all did at that age.
The grown up who is weary, whose bills weren’t paid last month.
The woman who looks back at me in the mirror.

Humanity.
Humanity needs acceptance.
Humanity needs us.
Needs me.
Needs you.

Yes.
Today is one of those days.
And I am going to live it.
And give it
away.

♡