Tonight I sit with all the Mommas Who are too tired to stand,
Covered in snot and vomit and germs and tears
Leaning their heads back with eyes closed and shoulders slumped.
The Mommas whose time cards were long ago full
And whose weariness curls up in the smile lines on their face.
I hold my wine glass and drink to them,
The crazed-with-love and drained-with-love sort,
The ones who sometimes thumb through old pictures of their lives Before
And remember blacked out nights when the wind played songs of youth against their faces.
The ones who question their every choice, scrutinize their every move,
And yet have never felt so certain of one thing in their whole lives...
What it means to love.
And not the swoony I want to make out all night love,
Not the reverence and respect for raising me love,
Not even the look in the mirror and appreciate this love.
No...The Love.
The one reserved for the Mommas.
Who puked and expanded and screamed and deflated,
Who engorged and pumped and flowed and fed,
Who counted tiny hairs on the top of tiny heads when sheep were no longer an option,
Who cried with joy and laughed with fear,
Who gave up happy hours and picked up playdates,
Who lost themselves and found themselves again,
Only to realize the them they were looking for was no more.
Tonight I look up to the sky and down to this skin
And I thank the Universe for Them.
For a tribe of women so connected, so powerful that no force could break them,
For shared experience and wordless knowing,
For a million words conveyed in a single look,
For the silent sacrifice brewing the elixir we breathe and feed from,
For The Love.
For Her. And for me.
And this glass of wine.
And a quiet moment to drink it all in.
For the Mommas.