For the Mothers Who Won't Get Much Sleep Tonight

     Last fall, I was privileged to attend an online writing workshop called, Finding Your Voice from a creative group called, "The Fold." 

    It is a workshop designed to help writers and songwriters unlock their creative voice in a supportive space. 

    If you are a person who writes poetry or prose, or songs, or a person who breathes, I can't recommend this workshop enough. 

   I created the following piece in my 2nd Fold Workshop. 

For the Mothers who Won't Get Much Sleep Tonight 

In the middle of the night, my baby cries out.

Instinctively, half-awake, I rise and leave my sleeping husband.

I lumber to the baby’s crib, gather him up, and place his head on my shoulder, just he way he likes to be held.

He stops crying as soon as he feels my touch. His mother’s touch.

I sit down in the well-worn nursing chair, and relax with him, feeding his little body and heart, and his young, but by no means unformed, soul.

What a blessing that for at least one human on the planet, I actually can be everything, at least at three months old.

All because God created me to be a woman.

The wrinkles by my eyes will come out in full force tomorrow.

None of my projects will get done.

I will struggle through the day, half-awake, trying not to despair, trying not to be cranky.

I will try to remember that everyone in the family will eat, and no one will go naked, and it will be fine. 

For these fleeting moments, he and I are one, just as we were when he grew inside me.