I’d Rather be a Mom

There was a time,not too long ago, that I wished I were a dad instead of a mom.Sierra was in a bad way in China. She was sick and had been on and off multiple drugs- scary ones like powders in paper bags and a dose of 30 pills a day. She was in and out of clinics and even the hospital. She was very far away. Her big beautiful face on my computer monitor cried to her Mama and she said she was scared. Her father, of course, was very upset too. Later that night,unable to focus on any work,I leaned against the woodstove and stared while Todd leaned against the enamel sink and stared. I thought we’d have a shared parental moment and so I asked, “What ya thinking,honey?’

He said, “I am strategizing how to run the generator if we lose power in the storm.”OK! That’s good.I didn’t want to be strategizing how to run the generator because I was immersed in feeling sorrowful and helpless over my daughter. And I said to my girlfriend, “He wakes up rested every morning while I answer the phone late at night from China and then can’t get back to sleep because I am so worried. I would like to be a dad sometime, just for a bit, instead of a mom.”

But as I sit in the Moscow airport and wait for another flight,I think about my girl whom we are flying around the world to be with, and I am very glad that I am a mom.  I know what awaits me. I know the smell of her neck and her skin because I’ve cuddled with her in her bed, and I know the feel of her curly thick long hair through my fingers as I’ve combed out her tangles and I know the texture of her muscles in her shoulders and her back as I’ve massaged her,even the slight pungent smell of her feet when she pokes them on to my lap on the sofa to tell me she wants them rubbed and I bend my mouth down to kiss them. These are PRIVLEDGES reserved for Mothers. Her father is anxious to see his daughter but her mother is beside herself. SKYPE is wonderful but I want to touch and smell my daughter.One sense is not enough and soon, all my senses will be filled up with my missing child!