By Megan Oteri, www.memomuse.wordpress.com

My son is sleeping on my husband’s chest. Snuggled in an O against his broad shoulders in a snuggly nest. Resting easy, gently. I want my son to wake up because I haven’t seen him this morning. My husband let me sleep in, because I stayed up late last night writing and working on grad school work. I woke refreshed and awake, not my usual still-feel-like-I-need-two-more-hours-of-sleep grogginess. Dare I say refreshed. Yes, I was refreshed.

As I walked by my two darlings, my husband was singing a song and waving me off –- as in, “go away!” So you don’t wake the boy. He is almost asleep. I went to the kitchen to get my breakfast and make coffee. I toasted two slices of cinnamon-raisin bread and slowly buttered it, taking my time. I put my son’s toys in the basket that I washed yesterday, placing them in, like an organizer would, quite a difference than their daily throw-it-in-the-basket routine. I did some laundry, changing over a load in the washer to the dryer and taking the dried clothes out of the laundry room. That load is in the kitchen. Still.

I want my little one to wake up. I miss his little face, his little body. His tiny little shoulders -– how they’ve grown — yet he is still so tiny.

I can hold his hand now and it makes me giddy, my hands and long fingers intertwined with his little mini fingers that will grasp so many tangible and intangible things in his lifetime. He will hold the hand of the woman he will marry with those hands.  He will hold the hand of the woman who will break his heart with those hands. He will hold a pencil to take the SATs with those hands. He will hold that same pencil in his hand, as he may struggle in college. He will hold the crayon that he writes his name with for the first time with those hands. God forbid, he may hold a beer in those hands in college. For now, those little hands give me glee. Give me goose bumps — how beautiful they are! How magnetic they are! Drawing me to them, as if my eyes are magnetized, my heart pulling me closer every day to this new and joyful love of mother and son.

My husband and my son are in the same room as I write this, their chests breathing in and out together in unison. The same hearts, bonded with mine. Love is an amazing thing. It isn’t always floodlights and fireworks, shining brightly above a star-filled sky, with fiery, colored flames sparkling down and dropping into a scenic river or lake. Sometimes it is blurry, like a rainstorm and the windshield wipers aren’t working or better yet, are jammed. And you can’t see a thing and have road rage because you’re stuck in the clogged congestion of life’s freeway, with people honking at you to hurry up. But sometimes, not all the time, just sometimes, it is pure magic.

It stops you dead in your tracks, as if alone in a white fluffy forest, frosted with elegance. It whistles at you and shouts its name. Stitching…beating…breathing…beating…breathing heart murmurs all over your sky-filled soul. You sit on a lawn, with a blanket below your knees. Hot warm, summer skin, dark, stars bright and plump like ripe apples, and wonder, working willfully, scattering wisdom and love across your own family sky.