Just how much I love you

This might sound like rambling and complete nonsense. I am not even sure if I can explain in words what I actually felt, but here goes:


I put Lawson down at 7 and she cried for 30 minutes. Her molars are coming in and that poor girl is miserable. I finally caved and went upstairs to hold her. As soon as I picked her up, she buried her snot covered, wet face into my neck (not before giving me a good swipe of boogies over my cheek). I gently sat down on the glider and started to rock as I've done a million times since she's been born. She was fast asleep in seconds as I held on to her with all of my might wishing her to stay the baby I can rock forever. Normally this is the point, as I am holding my greatest treasure, that I look at my mom's picture on the shelf in L's room and well up with tears still in disbelief that she's missed all of this.


Before I even looked at the picture, I saw my mom. I was completely daydreaming (ok, eve-dreaming) but I saw her in the chair where I was sitting rocking Lawson. Then I realized she wasn't rocking Lawson, she was rocking me. She was holding me in the exact same way that I was holding Lawson. One arm under my bottom supporting me, my head in the nook of the left side of her neck, and her other arm wrapped tight around my middle. Then in a second and only for a moment, I was my mom. I felt every hug she ever gave me. I felt that feeling she must have had as she held Jaime and I...never wanting us to not be her babies. There was a surge of love racing through me and into Lawson. I had to lay L back in her crib before I was the one snotting all over her.


When Lawson giggles, when she claps, when she does just about anything, there is always that moment when I think, "why isn't she here for this", "mom would love to see this".


Even though I know those feelings will always surface, tonight I kind of feel like she was there for this. Even if "this" was a little glider time with my teething booger-plum-fairy, she was there. In my heart? Looking down from the clouds? Actually there? I don't know, but she was there, and she's here in every one of these falling tears.


There was never a moment in my life that I ever doubted the love my mother had for me. She glowed love for us. Every night at bedtime I say a mantra to Lawson: You are going to be strong, and wise, kind, and just, loyal, confident, and full of faith. I then tell her she is my gift and my treasure (words stolen from my mom) and that she will never not know just how much I love her.