Heartbeat
When I get up from rocking Isaiah to sleep, the rocking chair continues for a couple of beats, knocking solidly against the floor, like a heartbeat. The-thunk, the-thunk.
I like to think that it keeps him company for a moment, after I’ve laid him in his bed, swaddled up in a blanket with hair standing on end, the flushed cheeks and warm hands of sleepy childhood poking out. Maybe the rocker, gently moving, will remind him that his parents are ever ready to help him again, that he is not alone, even in the dark of his room and the dead of night.
The steady beat of the rocker is comforting to me, too, because my life has patterns I chafe against. I am so grateful for friends, for family, for ping of a text message, connecting me to another human even when I’m scurrying to and fro like a over-caffeinated mouse. But I’m also lonely, even in a wealth of relationships. I spend too many afternoons re-reading the same paragraphs in my book or re-reading entire stories out of toddler books, re-folding laundry and re-washing dishes. My life has a the-thunk to it in this season, a normalcy that is as exhausting as constant change. I miss my husband but I also crave being alone with my thoughts; I long for white space while hoping the phone will ring; I hate to be bored but I loathe the frantic busyness of our era.
At least a few times in every 24 hours, I come back to the the-thunk of the rocking chair, like a yogi coming back to breath. My mother-in-law likes to say “you will never regret rocking your children”, which I sometimes repeat to myself when I feel frustration bubbling beneath the surface. It’s normal, like any meditation; I’d rather watch TV, read a book, call a friend, eat dinner, do anything other than the persistent, present, the-thunk, the-thunk.
But I return. I return because my baby needs me, and, as impossible as it seems, he won’t need me forever. I return because something tells me that this present moment is a refining one, that the twinkly dreams of motherhood and family are nothing without the self-sacrifice of hours in the rocking chair. I am not always good at relishing the moment, or staying in the present; but when he lets out that baby sigh of sleep – when I get up to lay him down – I hear it, the the-thunk, the-thunk. It’s the heartbeat of my days, the metronome of motherhood. I know I won’t regret it, and I don’t want to miss it.