and then there are days when you weep for the unraveling. clothesline an endless line of diapers and baby sleepers and you and your husband in an argument about how to properly pin a shirt and your son falls on baby and it takes everything in you to keep your voice calm for the sadness in his tiny face over hurting the one he loves.
and there is so much sadness in love, and it’s so easy to hurt the one who holds you. to squeeze too tight, or to let go too soon, and i escape to the garden where the flowers grow silent and i can be alone, for just awhile.
and i unravel with the weeds, this mama-bent-back and the sun is warm and i remember sunday, the way trent whispered, “that’s them…” and i looked to see five children trailing their father into church, their own backs bent, hands in pockets, the father dressed in a suit, and they’d all just lost their mother. a sudden death. a brain aneurism. and i stared, never having seen them before, and my body became a teardrop. and somehow they walked into church, and they shook the hands of the sunday greeters and they made it to the pew where they’d sat weeks before grieving the loss of the one who’d given them life.
and i follow my feet back into the house back into the arms of my husband and children. for i would fold a thousand diapers just to hold my loved ones another hour. because this love, with all of its sadness, with all of its clotheslines and potty-training and wedded misunderstanding, is worth living for.
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*prints of ‘Love Song’ available here*