Running Water

I closed my eyes before my first child was born, and saw myself with cupped hands, trying to catch a steady stream of pouring water that was my life. It’s impossible to keep water in the hands, but yet I kept trying; kept feeling and thinking I need to do this but I can’t! I need to do that but I can’t! Too much to do for a working mother-to-be. Too impossible to hold that small stream, like the flow from a tap, in my hands.

I closed my eyes weeks after my son was born, and saw myself with cupped hands. No longer was I trying to hold a small, steady stream coming from a tap hooked into the world. I was soaked; trying to catch a wall of water raining upon me. The first stream had been impossible, but it was small and simple. The downpour was overwhelming. I couldn’t hold one drop – it splashed away too quickly and fell too fast, too hard. It washed away my tears, ran down my lips and soaked through my skin. I tried to control a wall of running water with my two little hands.

But I was never drowning. The water never left me numb nor burned. It was merely life; a life that could sustain nothing more than being a new mother; than watching over the most beautiful child ever created. It was life that needed to be let go, refocused for the new path of motherhood. I now follow the stream directed by my children; it’s rapid and I can’t control it, but I don’t feel the need to, either.