Okay

He says, wash mine hands, Mama. So I hoist his nearly three year old booty up to my stomach and we lean in over the sink. The water is shivery cold and so we hurry and he starts to force exaggerated shaking and teeth chattering, dramatizing as he has a tendency to do.

I grab the towel from the oven handle and we wipe wipe wipe together until I can't help anymore because he's got both of his little arms wrapped tightly around one of mine, one of his little legs following suit as he lifts it up off the floor to try to add it to the arm hug party. A chubby cheek presses the side of my wrist and he makes sounds that say he's warming up with my arm's willing assistance. Which is good because the other arm is busy reaching for coffee. My heart is filled with the goodness of he and his brother and their Daddy and at the same time, I feel a bit at a loss today, a loss of nothing but an idea, but a small void all the same.

I completely and totally thought I was pregnant this last week. But I wasn't. And that's okay, while it's also a strange nagging not okay. As anymommy (love her) replied (on Twitter), a negative test result is like an empty ice cream container. Yes. Both cause that heart-fall, that sinking moment of a wish stolen. Different of course, but the same.

Baby lust.

I have that. I really wanted ice cream and it was all gone. And I say that's okay because it's not like this last month was the final chance in all of eternity. And I say that's okay because these days, everything really is okay. Even if it's awful or hard, in the end it will be okay. Baby or no baby, disease or no disease, obstacle or no obstacle, pain or no pain...

Knowing that's true makes it okay to lust after a hopeful seed in your heart, even if you aren't sure if you're going to get what you want.

So I can still have faith that we just may get what we're pining after, desiring, while feeling that peace that reminds me that even if we don't, our faith and hope won't die with that dream. That they will stick around because they are in a shivery arm hug and in the greenest grass and the robin's blue eggs and a hearty chuckle and a full container of ice cream.

And after the arm hugging, my boy sat with wooden train tracks, struggling to construct the thing that he wanted most, lines of connection that go round and round. He was frustrated, getting half of them upside-down. I caaan't Mama, he said, heeelp meeee. So I did, connecting the pieces in a way I thought was best, even if it wasn't exactly the shape he had hoped for. It will work. And just as he always does, even when things don't turn out how he planned, he sat back and looked and considered and then chose to squeal Yay! while clapping his chubby little hands together. That's just who is, and I'm going to keep trying to be like him.


This post is a part of Five for Ten at Momalom.