We needed to get up. The morning was going to be rushed, I knew.
But, I let her sleep on. She had conned her way into sleeping with us the night before. She’s getting too old, too big for that. I never sleep well when she does, but still I don’t mind. I love to feel her skin and the simple closeness of her. She nestled her head, with her wild hair that smelled of sweat and coconut, into that pocket in my shoulder. It caused my arm to tingle with the encroaching numbness, but I let her sleep on.
I smiled and shook my head at the ridiculous pig sleep mask that was half-cocked on her face and made a mental note to wash her nightly companion. I counted the freckles on her perfect little face and tried to tilt my nose away from her morning breath.
I glanced at my phone – we really needed to get up.
The day before my phone had lit up with call from the school. It was the recorded voice of my daughter’s principal, a bright, enthusiastic woman who pronounces all the kids’ names correctly, relaying that the school had gone through a successful lock down drill.
After five years, those calls still make it feel like I have been hit in the chest by Thor’s hammer. To think that the kindest soul I have ever known has to practice what to do in case someone comes into the halls of her elementary school, the same halls that are decorated with finger paintings and inspirational quotes, and tries to take her precious life makes me have to hold onto something so that I don’t fall to my knees.
Despite the fact that we were going to be late, I needed a minute more of her warm arm flung across my chest. I longed for the perfect safety that was found nestled amongst the comforter and pillows. I desired the familiarity of the one who knows me from the inside. I marveled at the level of comfort we have with each other, how our bodies, nine years later, still fit together.
She was the missing piece to my scattered jigsaw puzzle. She brought all of my wayward pieces together. She made me whole. She made me her mama.
She has the best gap toothed smile since Lauren Hutton. She reminds me every day to see the good in an often caustic world. She loves to hunt with her dad. She loves to watch old movies with me. She would eat sour cream by the tub full. Her hugs have healing powers. She is whip smart but a little lazy. She would talk to a wall until she made it smile.
My daughter is made up of rhythmic spring rains and warm ocean breezes and deadpan deliveries and sunsets over the Appalachians and stinky Nikes and musical laughter. She comes in all the dancing colors of the rainbow.
And, soon this magical creature will have to get up and face world where she has to learn to quietly huddle behind a desk in case someone comes into her school and tries to extinguish one of the brightest lights the world has ever seen.
So, I let her sleep on.
Soshally Awkward
Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.
