Extra Blankets

It is 10:49 PM and I just went in to put an extra blanket on Jacob. Given how late it is, you can imagine my surprise at finding him still wide awake, crying into his pillow. "Baby, what are you still doing up, are you OK?" "No mommy, I feel sad." "Why are you sad?" "Because Mommy, just because."

I guess it just feels kind of shocking to come upon my little one crying to himself, rather than yelling for me or getting up to find me. As the mother of a baby or a very young child, you still feel like they are part of you, an extension of your own feelings and experiences. But on some level this is not so - they are immediately their own person and they have their own inner dialogue and their own thoughts and feelings and stuff going on that you as a parent can only guess at. Even as a grown up married woman, it is weird to realize there is a tipping point beyond which my husband begins to know me better than my own parents. I couldn't tell you at what point this began to be so, it is just something that happens as you spend daily life with your spouse and time goes on. It isn't sad, it is natural and normal and part of God's plan (Mathew 19:5).

I look at my little son in his PJ's and I think that I know him best, and yet here he is, sitting awake all alone in the dark in his room, feeling sad. So I sit down and kiss his cheeks and rub his back and whisper, "Tell Mama why are you sad little one?" and he looks up at me with great big eyes and says "Because... (big gulpy sob) because Nemo is gone." I reach down and get his stuffed Nemo off the floor and he wraps his arms around it and says, "Thank you Mama." So, OK, someday he will grow up and away and apart from me. And he will feel things and need things and I won't be able to fix it all for him. But not tonight...