"Silent Night...all is calm..."
It is quiet now. I revel in the amazing stillness as my babe lies near me, her deep and rhythmic breathing calming her tumultuous cough. The other, her fever broken with the wonders of Tylenol and time, is also at rest, mending, healing sleep. I marvel now in their stillness, in the smoothness of their faces, in the gentle chaos of their limbs, in the soft flutters of eyelashes and intermittent moans of dreams unknown. Was the little one really shrieking with laughter only moments before? Had that one really just jumped off the coffeetable? It is hard to imagine and I find it both irritating and endearing, this dichotomy of childhood.
To be frank, when my own emotional state sways to and from sanity to madness in the invisible fractions of time, I can't keep up with their duality. I want to laugh when they cry, want to scream when they are exuberant, want to walk away when they cling. And yet, sometimes there are magical moments too when we finally click in sync with one another's rhythms and it is like a window, a sparkle, a dance.
In sweet repose their innocence splays out their fragility and that surge of fierce protectiveness--that which is oft lauded in charming sugar-coated tomes of parenthood-now comes over me and I curl up around their small bodies. I can not shield them from the world forever, but for tonight I can brush the tendrils of hair from the soft nape of thier necks, kiss thier squooshie cheeks and whisper to them,
"...sleep in heavenly peace..."
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