We have had family here visiting this last week. We have had constant plans, and life has been bustling. We have gone into town, and way out to one of the farthest points by the ocean.
At each place the family circles around with arms reaching out to keep my toddler granddaughter from hurting herself.
“We don’t eat rocks.” “No, no. You can’t go there.” “Please give that to me.”
You have to keep toddlers from a laughable amount of calamities every single day.
Everywhere we go, we all keep our eyes on her together.
She is the only baby. The Queen.
She points her finger at a book and says, “Read it,” so we read it.
If she doesn’t like it two pages in, she will hold her palm up and say, “All done. Close it.”
We close it immediately.
We take turns keeping her entertained, and all laugh often at her together.
There is no greater catalyst for bubbling joy than to be around a toddler to me.
I love their dirty-faced chaos, and their perfect-palm prints I will later find on my mirrors.
Mavis is dandelions, and bubbles, and favorite rocks.
She has become our absolute everything.
At one bookstore on Sunday my daughter, Alena, and I both teared up at a picture book depicting the way time moves on, and how the baby one day can become the mother to another baby;
How motherhood is a universal circle of timeless love; Endlessly repeating.
I looked at the roughly drawn images of a mother on her knees with her arms reaching out to her baby girl, and my heart broke, once again, within me.
It breaks every day because of that very circle.
Once you are a mother, you are a mother to every baby.
The headlines tug harder once you have your own,
and you see your own child’s face in the face of any other child.
I hurt when other mothers are hurting.
I picture my arms reaching out to their children, too, just like we do for little Mavie;
Whether it’s the babies in Gaza who are starving, with their country war-torn,
the kids wondering where their Venezuelan parents suddenly are,
or whether it’s the girls in Texas flood waters who are still missing.
I am repeatedly broken and poured out.
A new thing happens, and I realize there is no bottom to the compassion in me.
My heart is a mother’s heart equally for each of them, no matter their ethnicity,
and I cannot shake their faces from my memory.
All children are innocent in this world of man’s hatred of one another, and darkness.
They are all born into hope no matter the country.
All those children have families who reach out for them, too, laugh at them, play games with their hands, and try to spark their imaginations.
There are dreams of a future for each little face.
Every child deserves to be cared about, searched for, fought for, and – if lost – be mourned over, no matter where in the world they live.
No matter their political or religious beliefs.
Any time there are mass deaths of any kind things become political,
but the core of me just wants to quiet the noise, and the blame, and the anger for a bit,
and let the mothers everywhere know I am sitting with them all today.
I am reaching out to help hold the world’s children.
I want to help scoop them up, and place whatever is dangerous far out of their reach.
I want to read them stories, and watch their lit-up expressions.
I want to give them soft things to hold, and good things to taste.
I want them sleeping with full little bellies,
and to kiss their freshly-woken, rosy cheeks.
I want to tell them it will be OK, because I am here.
I want them to know that they are all safe with me.
I just want others to join me; Join me in my reaching.
Join me in holding our hands out together to block off the dangerous ledges,
and to help keep them safe.
If we want a world one day of protectors, and heroes,
and not more people who serve only to criticise, damage, and to bully others,
we have to remember that
all the world’s children will one day become whatever it is they see.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
