Day with Mud

Here it is the dear, sweet, wondrous crib. The heirloom I sought out for months while I was pregnant. Only finding it a week before I gave birth. I had wonderful visions of my children and then my grandchildren sleeping in this crib. The reality so very different in every way from what I thought I having children would be like.

Not a one of my four children ever s pent more than an hour or two in it. Certainly not the night. They slept with me. Snuggling to me all night long to nurse or talk. Being close until they where two or four in the case of my our third Ryland. The cats found a safe haven and dozed luxurious days of peaceful slumber in the safety of the crib. So glad I had paid such a ransom for a cat bed to shelter them from that screaming thing in their bed. While my babies learned the dangers of falling off the bed. My grandmother bought the crib for us. We all thought it the central point to this unborn child's world. Silly me. I was the central part of my child's world. Everything about me.

For nine years now someone has shared our bed and our life. Often overlapping considerably. They have made this life so much the better, and messier. I don't have a clean house or a pretty garden anymore. I wore mismatched socks day. They where however both Halloween socks. So there same holiday. I don't shower every day and I never wake up alone. Or with my husband.
I have wonderful children who think having their mom as a teacher rocks.

But the crib in leaving now, for sale on craigslist. There is no point in holding on to this emblem of babyhood that I never used. I hope the next person to have it finds it as useless as I did. There is no moment in life so sweet as that of waking with a tiny warm body next you. Sleeping contently because you are there. It is so fleeting and seems so long some days.

Posted in: family life on Tuesday, November 4, 2008 at at 12:34 PM