Enjoy: The Beautiful Work of Motherhood

This is my last week of parenting poetry as Lauren’s challenge draws to a close. I’ve enjoyed participating and being stretched out of my comfort zone and ” forced” to write. I’ve also enjoyed reading the beautiful poems from the other participants! Thanks for the challenge Lauren!

Enjoy – Week Five

This week we’re embracing the camaraderie of parenthood and reveling in our children’s joy and creativity.

Play

She plays with wild abandon.
She embraces it, submits to it completely with no worries, no cares.
Imagination is king, laughter the soundtrack.
The ordinary and mundane are transformed as only the eyes of a child can do.
She will ask you to enter, to learn at her feet. But be ready to leave your assumptions at the door. They are not welcome in her workshop of play.

Imagination

Great gobs of bright, shiny paint on a construction paper surface.
What I think is plenty is never enough.
Where I would use a brush, she uses her hands.
Paint oozes through her dainty fingers and penetrates her fingernails, leaving the memory of their time, however brief, there.
Color heaped upon color heaped upon color.
I think they are covered forever, but she brings them back with a sweep of one finger.
They peek out between the layers, happy to be unearthed.
The paper lays heavy, hinting at a tear but careful removal saves it, her masterpiece.

Needs

Nuzzling gently, breathing a satisfied sigh when he finds and drinks.
Gulping, gulping, gulping.
Then by and by it turns to soft fluttering and heavy eyes.
Slowly, slowly they drop.
Skin to skin, cheek to breast, his soft pillow.
Unlatch and sigh, his need peacefully met.

Respect

It starts at the beginning.
We respect their need for closeness.
We respond to their voice.
It remains as they grow.
We listen.
We respect their voice.
It is hard, too.
We let them make mistakes.
We let them learn.
It is essential.
We are there with open arms.
We let them live.

Work

My calling isn’t anything I get paid money for.
I toil at it all the same.
My job is not the famous sort.
But I feel recognized without having a name.
My hands get dirty, and held and worked.
And I sometimes shoulder blame.
My children are worth all my seconds and more.
They made me a mother when they came.

Siblings

I love to look in my rearview mirror.
I get to see him looking at her, head completely turned, throughly engaged by her.
Loved from his first seconds by her as she watched him in those morning hours emerge in his watery entrance to the world.
She isn’t gentle, no, she’s boisterous.
She is eager to include him in everything.
She laughs with him, the giggles echoing in every room.
He smiles at her and they lock eyes.
They enter a world their own, I a curious bystander.
Curious that I am the reason, the womb they shared at different times.

Learning

She makes up poems now.
He terrorizes cabinets.
She loves Starry, Starry Night.
He loves scaling the stairs.
She asks for me to read Little House in the Big Woods.
He watches the world from my baby carriers.
They learn wherever we are.
This world is their school.

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