Oh so many things that I want to write about. I am a little mess of emotions. But I probably won’t write about them because, because, because…
Love. Love is one of the things that has been high on my mind. As I lie next to my Bibble Bot, if and when I am called upon in the night to give motherly comfort, I smell her hair and stroke her arm, and I marvel at how solid and long she is compared to the little pip of a thing, whose whole body length could fit the width of my chest, in those first few weeks.
I wonder at how much like being in love it is to love your child. It is not like loving a friend or a sibling because, no matter how great it is, that kind of love lacks the physical aspect of mother love. When you love your child it is, a little bit, like how you may love your child’s father. You love the bones and the skin. You want to touch the hair. You want to kiss the cheek and the neck. You want their kisses in return. The love that you feel is so undeniably physical.
I think when you are a child you have the same physical love and need of your mother. I remember sitting in church as a little girl next to my Mummy (Mum came later), feeling in such awe, feeling in love, feeling that I was so lucky to have the best mummy ever. Oh, all those other poor children. She sang the best, she had lovely hands, she had a lovely soft rabbit skin coat (or squirrel… omg that sounds a bit Mr McGregor, does it? Nevermind), and she smelled, oh how lovely she smelled…
But all that fades after the first flush. It does doesn’t it? As you grow and become your own little woman you have to leave your mummy behind. She becomes Mum and you become a dreadful teenager. And then you really, really leave and go bungee jumping in Australia, sky diving in New Zealand, breaking your bones in India, losing your marbles in Hong Kong… and on and on. I came back of course.
But I know where this is going. Is my heart going to break? How many times?
