A Mother's Gift

A Mother’s Gift

Days stretch on endlessly, at times,
Like an endless highway bending into the azure horizon.
I have driven lonely stretches across the west,
The road wrapping and twisting towards the cobalt sky--
My tires ticking along the hard- lined pavement,
While my thoughts whistle and wind into mindless oblivion.
I begin conversations with myself to pass time,
Rhetorical questions surfacing with no end--
Like the road.
Finally, just when I think insanity has set in--seeped in,
I see Colorado mountains scraping the horizon,
And I scream a loud, astonishing bellow and re- collect myself.

I have found that mothering feels like a road that starts with a bellow
At a labor done and the longest journey beginning.
This mysterious road leads in a direction that is mostly forward,
But seems, at times, to be going backward as
The endless bumps of weeks, days, and seconds, click
Under my heels like blips on a surface that has no familiarity.
My navigational abilities blur as my eyes, heavy ridden with sleeplessness,
And my hands, dry as leather from endless diaper changes,
Tick along to nurse, wipe, clear, and collect my children.
Time wraps itself through the pavement of my life and pulls me under sometimes.
--I went to sleep 25 and woke up with a child at 30.
But ahh, the sudden relief at pit-stops on this highway--
ripples of laughter, dimpled cheeks wet from tears, an owie to kiss,
A newborn to smell, and the sticky wet kisses of Teddy to break up oblivion--
centering me in this journey that is always a road and rarely a destination.
Ahh, my life is too small for these tasks—
A gift measured not by miles but by moment after moment of grace.