i am a mother (and it matters)

so here i am, again, and you haven't forgotten me, dear friends? and i, you... and this morning i scraped a bowl of porridge from a one year old's lap.

and his hand from the toilet bowl and it's been a week of four boys under the age of four. one of them, joey, the little boy you've been praying for, and he wept tonight for his mama who's taking a break, and we, his godparents, and so we put on dora the explorer and held him close and tried to promise him the love only a mother's embrace can give.

and joey and his brother are going home in two days, and we're a full house, and there's toys, and boots and mud and tomato soup-stains and sparing the guinea pig from sticky hands and saving baby from a fall down the stairs and trying to be God when we've had no sleep.

and trent and i look at each other across a mess of tousled heads and we see the person we want to be: the one deep beneath the grime of the day to day, the one that weeps for all of the children with no love, and we don't want to be hypocrites.

so we open our doors and this is hard for me. i am a selfish girl who likes her space and her art and her writing and wants to be someone some day.

but today, when we were doing crafts and i was painstakingly gluing joey's hundredth fuzzy ball to his creation, this three-year-old looked at me and he said, "emily, you're doing a good job."

and this tells me i am someone.

for i am a mother.


(begging patience as i pack these boys home and then catch up on your blogs... loving you... and next week, imperfect prose will start again.)