Just Write... "here"

Trying something new today:  Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments... 

Linking up to Heather @ Just Write @ The EO

**warning**

writing a bit vulnerable today... proceed with care... and understanding we are okay.  

Here...

Here. Its been a week of new. Of firsts.  Its been an elevator ride of up and down, with a precarious sense of what floor the elevator doors might suddenly fly open and propel you towards.  

Biggest boy started 630 am hockey practices x3 days this week.  Containers of protein powder and breakfast foods mingle with shampoo and towels in an already crammed bag of stinky hockey gear.  

He is juggling homework and practices and new team mates and coaches, and an alarm that jolts us all out of deep slumber at 5:30 am.  And who will take and who will bring and do you have your shoes?  Your skates?  Your Middle School Life?  And hormones and tired and hungry add up to one grumpy boy by the end of a week of new.

Here. We've sort of been white-knuckling some of the new.  We've gripped the steering wheel tight trying to hang on and drive straight into the middle of we are doing this just fine.  And emotions have been steam rolled flat with too little time.  But emotions won't lie down for long. 

Tempers finally flare and the pressure of so much new on top of too little sleep melts one biggest boy into a puddle of little.  Whose dad rescues and coddles and comforts and calms.  Here.

And its then that littlest big boy bursts into sadness rolling down his cheeks in big round puddles of hurt.  He throws himself onto my bed and melds his skinny limbs and lengthy torso to mine and weeps. His breathing in gasps, and fits as he tries to tell.  

Who?  He asks... who? He sobs out his worry... when biggest boy needs Superman, who will littlest big boy go to if mom isn't...  who?

And I can't hear anymore as sobs strangle my own throat.  And I hold even tighter and kiss his splotchy face and try to squeeze out all the sadness he has carried.  I'm here.  Right here.  I whisper to him, I will always be where you can find me.  Here, when you need me, here.

His breathing slows and steadies.  His tears dry. His grasp does not loosen.  We are here... and it feels like forever... and maybe we can hold on in just this way till its firmly etched in every fiber of his breath and memory and being... this is what here feels like.  Here...