I See My Mother Kneeling...

There is a children's church song that was one of my favorites when I was a child, "Love is Spoken Here." The first verse goes:

I see my mother kneeling with our family each day.
I hear the words she whispers as she bows her head to pray.
Her plea to the Father quiets all my fears,
And I am thankful love is spoken here.

As a child, a teen, an adult, I generally thought of the "her plea to the Father" as one of those of the "Father, please keep my children from driving me insane and selling them to the gypsies" variety.

This morning found me with those lyrics running through my head as I knelt in the middle of my bed, pleading. Only my pleas weren't of the "please keep my child from driving me insane and selling her to the gypsies" variety. I realized about halfway through that I really hoped this was one "plea to the Father" that Woodstock wouldn't hear, because what mother wants to admit she's pleading to be as good as her child?

It sounds, in words on paper (in cyberspace), ridiculous. But I have a strongly held belief that until the age of accountability, children are, in essences, perfect spirits. That, combined with Woodstock's utterly gentle, loving nature, makes me want to weep at how much she's taught me. It hardly equates with me teaching her the letters of the alphabet or that big green harvesting machines are called "Combines" (she's really into trucks at the moment - obsesively into trucks, I might add).

Yesterday was a no-good-horrible-very-bad-day, for a dozen of little reasons. I kept it mostly together all day. Shortly before Woodstock's bedtime, I began fighting off tears. Tears of hormonal pregnant insantiy, to be certain, but tears nonetheless.

As I rocked Woodstock before bedtime, tears pooling in my eyes, she looked up at me and said, "Momma sad," and snuggled into me, resting her little blonde head beneath my chin. As I put her down, for the first time, unprompted, she said, "Love you Momma."

This morning, after the emotional fog had cleared and I was again thinking with some form of rational process, I struggled to express myself to my own Father - who has certainly never felt that I was better than He - He whom I must have disappointed thousands of times over and over. How does a mother, four days before Mother's Day, pay homage to her Father for the gift he has given her that has opened her heart to so much goodness, so much love, so much clarity? How does one say "thank you" for a little person's wisdom and insight? How does one plead with her Father to help her refrain from screwing things up as she tries to protect the love and goodness inside the snuggly lump of purple fleece in the other room?

How indeed.

This Mother's Day, I want to thank Woodstock - for teaching more than I could ever hope to teach her.