I have trouble sleeping at night, and I find that I’m often lying awake in the room I share with my husband and my infant son; trying to block out the womb noises coming from the ipod for my baby, and the bright gleam of his night light, (pretty though it is with its glittery moon and stars.)
Often such nights leave time for reflection, but most of the time I try to ignore any kind of reflection because I’m concentrating very stubbornly to get that precious slumber that comes so sparingly to new parents. But other times, I just lie there, defeated by my own effort to sleep and give in to the wandering reminiscent or nostalgic thoughts that float in and out of my head.
Last night, I came to bed late, and heaved myself onto my bed (which is basically on stilts now ever since we raised the legs to fit storage underneath to carve out a place in our apartment for our small son), and as I settled into my covers, I realized that I was lying in between two very precious specimens of manhood – and they both belonged to me:
My son, sleeping in the crib next to me, was doing his usual squirming and sighing in his deep sleep -- enjoying the slumber that comes with the innocent dreams of an infant, and my husband, lying next to me with his chest gently rising and falling as the night’s stillness enwrapped his peaceful face.
As I was lying there in the room by the glow of the nightlight, I realized that these two men give my world a sort of magic, and I live for both of them. I am their woman – the one privileged enough to care for them, love them, and bestow compassion, affection, and comfort over them in their troubles: a Mother and Wife, a lover of two souls, and a nurturer of two hearts; the heart of a man whom I lean upon, and the heart of the little man who leans upon me.
They are different in every way, except that they are men; one who doesn’t even know what it means to be a man yet, and one who shows me every day what a worthy man is. And they are mine.
I realized that just by nature of having these two men in my life, I felt privileged in a way I could never have imagined in my girlhood fantasies of adulthood. I realized that I want to do everything in my power to be the encourager and life-giver to these two precious souls for the rest of my life. Because whatever my calling is or may yet be in the vague and foggy future, my vocation now is to be all that I can be for these males in pursuit of their manhood – to be a solace and a joy to them along life’s bumpy byway, and to be all at once their princess and their queen.
Whatever the magic of that sparkling starry night-light spread across the room, the magic I encountered was far more mystifying, but perhaps the same nightlight that cast soft illuminations over the forms of those two loves of mine, was the reason my mind was illumined that night too.