It is late afternoon and through the nursery’s gauzy drapes I can see the shadows dusking across the lawn.

It is Spring, but it could be any season, any year.

It is Spring but it could be any season, any year

For me it is this chair.

My tailbone aches from sitting, wrenched forward in order to maintain a hollowed out abdomen for my grandson’s head as he naps.

He is warm, almost sweaty, and breathing so lightly, so smoothly, he sips the air in the nursery.

I know that I am here for the duration. Let the minutes tick, the hours wind down.

There is no getting up to get a glass of water, no trips to the bathroom.

We are here, in baby time.

My body is now the concave version of my pregnant self when I supported my own daughter.

I would contort into any position to keep this child’s head safe.

Patience comes with age. There is no better thing outside this door, only distraction. Only the messy world that threatens the napping of my wee one.

To give in, to surrender to the shape that is required to love and to support, is no weakness, it is like the strongest tendon in the body, a ligament that can stretch to bear the weight of unbearable things.

Sometimes the body rests easily when the mind wrestles and strains.

Today I let my thoughts sift away on the mountain air. Being here with this child inflates the old bellows from motherhood, the muscle memory kicks in and inflates my old lungs.

My old heart.

And this child will break this old heart, of this I am sure. It’s what happens when you allow yourself the opening to love.

And this child will break my heart, of this I am sure. It’s what happens when you allow yourself the opening to love.

When you surrender everything – your judgements, your opinions, your petty hurts of the ego – when you offer up the soft underbelly.

When you risk to conform to this new shape. This safe new nest beneath an expanding breast.

Now he smiles, pupils still rolling beneath thin blue lids. What does he dream about? Does he see the light and stars from his placental galaxy?

Or is it the giant moon of his mother’s gaze on this bright new planet?

Where my daughter nestled, now my grandson rests.

Looking back, I recognize that so many moments with children demanded a choice: whether to stay firm, or to take a breath and give in.

So much harder to give up the spinal rigidity, but in the softness lies the trust.

When my mind slips back to worrying, I think of how the modern digital world moves at such a furious clip and I’m anxious that I won’t keep up.

Will he still want to read with me in a few years?

But for now I sigh and pull the chunky board book out from under my numb backside.

I Will Love You Til The Cows Come Home.

My daughter has memorized the lyrical lines of this book and I can almost see his small belly relax and pulse when she repeats the rhyming phrases.

For the words live in the body. Like memory. Like my love for this boy. And my body’s hammock wants to imprint upon his recollection in the same way.

But his memory is no one’s but his own. And I have to trust that as he grows he’ll recall that in some way that his Gigi has a space, a hollow, a safe cave for him to run to.

I’m so grateful that my daughter trusts my cradling care. For some reason she hands this child to me without much of a worry.

Today I am sworn to this vow – to protect and defend this child or at the very least, to always be a soft place where he can land.