When Goodbye Means Hello (Pulling Random Thoughts Together)

So this is what I was thinking. There are so many times in our lives when we are forced to say goodbye to things that we are not ready to let go of.

I for one am not ready to say goodbye to baby. I love babies. I love MY babies. With Jake being the fourth and last baby, around the time I took these pictures:

I was constantly thinking: Will this be the last time I hold him as he drinks his bottle and drifts off to sleep? Please let this moment last. Let me not have to get up from this chair anytime soon. Let me not forget how he looks and how he smells. How the warmth of him sleeping in my arms just melts into all the nooks and crannies of my body. Please, please, I'm not ready to say goodbye to all this.

This poem has always touched my heart on this subject and I can never read it through without a catch in my voice and my eyes misting over.

Song for a Fifth Child.

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,

Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,

Hang out the washing, make up the bed,

Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?

She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,

Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.

Dishes are waiting and bills are past due

Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo

The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew

And out in the yard there's a hullabaloo

But I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo

Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue?

Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow

But children grow up as I've learned to my sorrow.

So quiet down cobwebs;

Dust go to sleep!

I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

Then around the same time Drew or Kyle (or probably both) brought me this beautiful bouquet of bright sunny dandelions. A weed to some but to 6 & 4 year old boys they are beautiful, priceless tokens of endless love and sincere thoughtfulness.

And I realized that saying goodbye to baby means saying hello to priceless gifts of endless wonder that the world has to offer. It means that he will grow and change, yes.

The sweet moments will change... but they will not end.

Look! They are all around!