The Stuff of My Heart

I had trouble writing the post last night, because so much of what I'm "doing" right now is inside my head and not the external tasks that make up the days. When Bailey was this age, I was incapable of experiencing emotion in a healthy way. I was leveled and at this point, was continuing to be leveled. I was in no way able to contemplate all that was happening inside of my head and my heart.

This time is different and I find myself reflecting on love. How lucky I am to love three people so completely. How lucky I am to be loved so comletely by three people. It's such an amazing and life altering experience.

I've spoken of my love for Kelly before, but always in a way detached from our children. After all, in many ways I believe that what we share MUST be detached from our children in order to have meaning without them. But that erases the very important reality that our love will never exisist without them again, even after they have grown and left our home. I choose to love Kelly - every day and sometimes more than once in a day. It is an active choice. Something that I do because I can't help myself and something that I do with delibrate decision. Our love is like a river, flowing and changing. Sometimes it is dry, the bed cracked and drought ridden, and other times it is a rushing, raging body of water, forsaking all in it's path. Most of the time is is mearly a river - with deep and shallow spots, rocky rapids and spots of babbling brook. What it always is, however, is a choice. It's a destination - something that we come to each day because we want to be here.

But even that isn't the right description, because we are no longer connected solely by choice. I have come to realize that loving my children is an act of loving Kelly greater than any that I have ever chosen. Our lives are completely and forever entwined in a way that words are incapable of describing. Loving her, and keeping our love strong and alive, is as necessary to our children as it is to us. It's also the inevitable outcome of loving our children. How could I ever love them, without recognizing the crucial role that their Mommy has in their lives. Because I love them I love her and because I love her, I love them. Choosing to work through whatever issues may arise in our marriage is not a choice, even though I have to choose to do it. Does that make sense? Walking away from her is not an option - even if I wanted to (which I don't). Unless she were to hurt the children, which she never would, I could no more walk away from her than I could walk away from them. Because the love is so woven together that to try to seperate one would destroy the others. And that is not a choice I could ever make.

My love for Bailey has also been talked about a lot, but not with the perspective of having another child to love. I can make comparisons about my two children and how I love them, but in reality, there isn't a comparison. I love them both to the depths of my soul, but differently. My love for my children is like the ocean. Vast, seemingly without a bottom. I realize that perhaps there is a bottom, but like the ocean, finding it would crush me. In reality there is no end to what I feel. I cannot see to the other side. I cannot fathom the depth or the ways that this vast body of love will change and carve the landscape of my soul. And in my inability to begin to see it in total, I just accept it completely. There is no end for my children and I. I love them as completely as I have ever loved, and more deeply than I could ever convey.

And yet, my love for each is so different. Sometimes I find myself shocked and amazed at how differently I love them. How is that possible? How is it possible that I can love each one to infinate degrees, but can so easily identify how different each feels?

Bailey is my soul child. She really is. I feel like our breath rises and falls together. I feel connected to her as if she is of my body. And not because I gave birth to her, but because she needs that from me. I hold her close to me in every possible way - physically, mentally, emotionally. She is never far from my thoughts, my words, my actions. She is, literally, with me every step of every moment. I love her fiercely, with an almost animalistic fever. I crave her in my very soul, and too long without her makes me feel breathless. The intensity that I love her comes directly from the intensity that is generated between us. There is nothing gentle or easy about my love for my first born child. It is heavy, strong, deep and true. She will forever be connected to a dark part of me, and she is the salvation I found in the darkest moments. I breath her in and I feel like I am breathing my own life. I love her so deeply that I almost fear it in moments and have to remind myself to step back, and let her grown and live her own life. My role with her is much more hands on than I ever expected. She needs me in ways that I never knew a child would need it's mother. She looks to me for everything and my disappointment can crush her little world. It is an awesome responsibility and I carry that with me every moment. My actions, my steps in this world, my choices all carve her path as deeply as they carve my own. And my job as her mother, in many ways, is to guide her off my path an onto her own. I have to do this by setting aside my own intensity and allow hers to dominate, and so her path becomes mine in many ways. This is what I'm talking about - this indescribable journey that we take together because we are so close.

Loving Bailey must be a selfless act. In order for her to have the space to grow, I must trim down my own largeness. I cannot walk into and completely fill a room because my daughter also walks into a room and completely fills it. My gift to her, my role as her mother, my job as her parent is to back up and let her expand. It is the most intense role of my life, requiring constant vigilence.

Connor, on the other hand, is like loving a fresh breeze. I never, in all of my wildest dreams, believed that I would love like this. I am intense, hard, dark in many ways. I love that way too. But not Connor. Connor is the fresh breeze that caresses my soul every day. His is lightness and sunshine, comfort and calm. The love I have for him is white hot - blinding in it's beauty and undeniable in it's strength. And yet, there is nothing complex or intense about it. It is simple and pure, easy and as natural as anything I have ever experienced. He fits against my breast, into my soul and in lights corner of my world that I thought would forever be darkened.

He seems to me to be a angel, literally. His crying, his moods, his needs - none of it is difficult. There is nothing that requires work for me. I have moments of frustration, but often those moments come when I am not really looking at him. It seems that the second I look into his eyes, a peace steels into my soul and calms me. I find such comfort in holding him, smelling him, listening to his sounds. My hands find new gentleness that has never existed before when I touch him. He was born, as completely my child as if he had actually come from my body. And it seems to be reciprocated. It's such a strange and beautiful thing to pick him up and feel him melt into me. It seems that he sees in my what nobody else ever has. He doesn't see intensity in me, he seeks and finds calm and comfort. It is almost as if he nurtures me. I care for him, tending to his daily needs, and yet it is in him that I find the most comfort. Not the other way around.

Or perhaps that is just my perception. I see him and I feel clean. I hold him and I feel free of all the burden that I have felt in parenting. He is my pure contrast - light where I am dark, simple where I am complicated, calm where I am intense. I find such beauty in the contrast that I can barely contain it. There are moments where I know joy like I have never known it when I hold him. I literally feel like I could be lifted from my feet and float among the clouds when he rests his cheek against mine and quiets. It's such an amazing lightness.

I feel like my job as his parent is as a mere guide. It's almost as if his path has already been partially carved, as if he will experience very little of the difficulties that his sister (and that his Momma) has experienced.

In many ways, I love him for many of the same reasons I love Kelly, and yet the two loves are completely different. Kelly calms me, but because my love for her is so hot and intense, it's not always calming. Connor is different. He brings peace to me in a way that is unmatched by any other soul I have ever encountered.

So that is where my head is these days. I have been tumbling these nuggets of thought around for a couple of weeks, grinding them down and seeking truth from them. Loving, so deeply and so differently, is such a gift. What a joy that I have known these three people and that I have them to hold and cherish for years to come. What an honor that Kelly chose me and that the two souls we call our children have chosen us. This is family. This is my family.