tonight.

Tonight I vented to Linda and David about how Judah’s current season of clinginess drives me crazy.  It’s not that I don’t want to be near him … it’s the constant tugging and climbing all over me and only wanting me to hold him or wipe his bottom or tuck him in bed.  Sometimes it’s plain suffocating.

I asked Linda, “Why!?”  And she said, in her patient and wise way, “Because he’s just a baby, Jules.  And babies want their mommies.”

And then, his little voice was calling my name from the bedroom.  I marched dutifully up the creaky stairs.  I changed a poopy diaper.  And afterwards, as I carried him back to bed, he smiled at me and said, “Mommy, you’re my best friend.”

And my hard, selfish heart melted.

We spent twenty minutes cuddling together, me laying on the wood floor next to his Mickey Mouse fold-out bed, him with his stuffed animals tucked close and his sea of blankets and his arms wrapped tight around my neck.  It was perfect.

I remembered Tony Woodlief’s words in his memoir, Somewhere More Holy, that we parents are security for our children.  They are not like us, who find security in things – in our homes and dishes and beds and wall hangings.  We are the center of their world.  So many parts of Judah’s little world are in upheaval right now, and he is dealing with it the only way he knows how; by clinging even tighter to the one person he feels most secure with.

In that moment I realized, one day he is not going to let me cuddle with him and hold him anymore.  That day I will have to find other, creative ways to show my affection.  But right now, I will soak up these cuddles while I have them, and store them up in that room that is the Judah-room of my heart, along with all the other delightful things that make him him. 

And I will ask God to please, please help me not to take any of it for granted.