I Hope You Know

It was after she had poured a bowl of tomato soup on her head and after I had cleaned it off with a questionably smelling dish rag that I lifted her up to help stir the cake batter. Evan was up on the chair too and he marveled at how robotically fast I could whir the batter around into a whirlpool with nothing more than a whisk and my mom muscles. Evan and Jemma took turns back and forth stirring, and I devised a little song to let them know how long their turn was - hoping one would not claw off the other's face in impatience.

"Oh yes we're stirring,
stirring,
stirring up the cake" (repeated 3x's)

There was a moment when my hand was over Jemma's helping her to stir while I was singing that she looked at me with complete amusement and joy. Time stopped. My heart squeezed. It was a perfect mom moment that you pray happen more often. (As opposed to those mom moments you cringe over and cry in the closet about.) It got me to thinking. She likely won't remember anything about this day.

She won't know that she has some special anus radar that causes her to poop at the exact moment I'm late to leave for somewhere important. She won't know how tired I am of reading that blasted ladybug book over and over, but I do it anyway because she loves it so much. She'll never know that when she is sick I check for fever against her forehead with my lips because it seems like the most temperature sensitive thing to do. She won't remember every tiny fingernail I clipped or song I've sung while she clings to wakefulness against my chest.

But someday, she'll be a happy grown woman. It will be the drops of my love in the bucket of her being that make her so.

When I die and am in heaven, I want certain things to happen. I want to know who killed JFK. I want my husband to know what 3 months of pregnancy nausea really does to you. (I fantasize about the day he falls at my knees and thanks me for the combined 9 months of misery I went through to give him babies.) And I want my children to magically comprehend how ridiculously I loved them.

If Evan turns out to be some sweaty, wife-beater wearing butt scratcher, I swear I'll stick my head in the garbage disposal and flip the switch myself. Motherhood is too much work to have it blow up in my face. My biggest hope for them honestly, is that they have the opportunity to love a little child the way that I get to love them. That will tweak their souls in the way I think God wants them tweaked. Making people. Caring for them. It is one crazy ride. Can I get an amen?