Sunday, May 16, 2010

All that tread the globe are but a handful to the tribes that slumber in its bosom.

Having spent the past hour and a half sobbing, I finally close the book and put it down. My eyes are swollen, my nose is running, and I feel spent.

I go upstairs and check on each of my boys, gently patting their long limbs under the covers, tucking well-loved stuffed animals into the crooks of their arms. I smooth their hair back from their foreheads, I kiss their cheeks, I breathe in their little boy smell.

The book I just finished has put on the table for examination the worst of every mother's fears, and while I am glad I read it, the book will go on my shelf and probably not be opened ever again by me. It is not the sort of book one rereads, despite the true compassion and love I feel for some of the characters.

It is a book that forces me to look at What if? and when it comes to my boys, the only what if I want to contemplate is a happy one. To speculate otherwise feels like tempting fate; although, sometimes, I think of it as protection. Like if I can imagine the worst, it will never, ever happen. Either way, I can't think too hard about this novel, it is too heartbreaking.

Yet I wake up this morning snarly and cranky from lack of sleep and a nagging headache. I find myself grousing at my beloved boys for demanding too much too early, for being too loud, for simply acting like little boys. Oh, the dichotomy of motherhood.

8 comments:

KPB said...

Yeah, can't quite see me reading this anytime soon. Enough crying here without reading a book to make me do so.

ssheers said...

Thanks for the warning. I was going to read that one, but not if it contains "the worst of every mother's fears."

Caterina said...

"I breathe in their little boy smell."

Oh...reading that made my heart melt.

You're such an awesome Mom!

BabelBabe said...

and I do mean smell. sometimes they are RIPE : )

Caterina said...

Hahaha....ripe! Hahaha. But sweetness ripe.

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