Carrying Love

Many years ago, a young girl with red hair handed her daughter into a stranger’s arms – the baby was wrapped in pink and carried in her tiny, premature heart, all of her mother’s hope and regret and love.

Mostly, she carried love.

Soon cradled in arms that had longed to hold a child, that tiny baby grew and blossomed and knew, always, that she was loved beyond measure. Her parents encouraged her to explore, to seek, to question, to fly.

And so she did, for many years – on trains, planes and itchy feet. She carried her belongings in a backpack, her dreams in her eyes and her hopes gaily, in her heart.

Mostly, she carried love.

Down an aisle she carried hope to the man she had chosen because she liked his smile. Together, they set about creating a home, amid much laughter and mess, with very little sense or money. Together, quite by surprise, they created a life and soon she carried crackers in her purse and weight in new places and books about everything she had never dreamed of, but suddenly wanted to hold more than anything.

Mostly, she carried love.

He was born with red hair and the feel of his tiny, premature heart beating next to hers was the most amazing thing she’d ever known. Into a new and wondrous land she stumbled, lugging carriers and diapers and more books about everything she’d never imagined and suddenly feared just a little bit.

She cradled coffee and his fiery head, held him for days and hours and months, in slings and tired arms and through the darkest parts of every night. She carried him upstairs and downstairs and through, in, over and around all the places in between.

Always, since him, she carried love.

Now her fire-haired boy is almost 10. He has been joined by another son, whose spirit is both soft and fierce and who, like his brother, holds one half of her heart. As they tumble through their days, they cannot know that they carry the dreams of all who have come before. They know only that into their bags she has packed lunches and books about stuff she says is important.

They know that they will find mittens and tissues she has tucked into their pockets. She hopes they remember the last-minute instructions she poured into their ears, that she loves them MORE and that they can be fearless if they choose. Every day, like her mothers before her, she hands her children out into the world – with hope, with regret, with dreams, with thanks.

And then she kisses them, on the cheek and the forehead and the lips.

So that into each day, they too, carry love.