... as much as I would like to get a full nights sleep, lately it just is not in the cards. I find myself looking at photos of the children from days that don't feel as long gone as they actually are.
I feel myself begin to revert back to the moments in those photographs and the scenes around me drift back into each one. I remember the days in particularly great detail, the surroundings begin to transform into false realities of diminishing time, and the sounds and smells take over my senses entirely.
I see their smiles and movements, their words stunningly clear in my tainted memories. The laughter portrayed fills a void of current presence and brings a very welcomed tear or two along. I look at the photos and feel happiness. Overwhelmingly joyful, irreplaceable, happiness.
I look at these photographs and remember every struggle we've faced together and revisit every lesson that we have taught one another, and feel myself choke up with a genuine sense of pride and accomplishment, knowing without a doubt, that there will never be a love more powerful, than the love of a parent for their children.
Never will there be a more forgiving or unquestionably admirable love than what your children see when they look at you. They learn this aspect of life based upon how you respond to every struggle, blessing, or act you react upon. You as a mother not only physically create their hearts, but you mold them emotionally as well, and that my dears, is scary business. They see how you respond and base their lives on your teachings. Whether or not you realize it, you are teaching them with every word that escapes your tongue, be it silver or golden. Sometimes, it is easy to overlook that and react in ways that set back every lesson you've built up for any particular foundation.
If I were allowed one wish, to be granted without question or based on any circumstance, my wish would be that my children reacted selflessly to the insecurities of life, and rather based their decisions on thoughtful and reasonable thinking. Although, I know it isn't entirely possible because getting what you give is similar to playing Russian Roulette in most cases.
Ask yourself: "If someone tells my children I responded the way I did, will they be proud? Will they understand? Will they agree?" If for no other reason aside from shaping the person whom you want to see your children become.
Here I lay with photographs in hand, memories flooding my mind, questions harboring my conscious and hope for more of these brilliantly clear smiles in future photos, and it all boils down to one thing...
I'm really not more certain who is proud of who, but I am certain that the very beat of my existence is happy to thrive on those dimples seized in the remains of the brief flash of the memories hidden inside these photographs.
