Mother is the home we come from.
She is nature, soil, ocean.
- Erich Fromm, psychologist

Baby's First Carress - Mary Cassatt

I’m missing my Daniel this weekend. He is in good hands, the best while on a coastal adventure with his big sister Zoë and her boyfriend. I’m sure that he and Zoë are having so much fun still I miss his goodnight kiss and hug rituals, his morning cuddles and hugs, his laughter…him…as much as I miss Zoë and all that is her extraordinary self everyday now that she lives far from the Big Top. Our children crave our touch, our arms protectively surrounding them with our maternal love but it seems that we need that contact just as much as they do…perhaps even more than they do.

When Jodie and I were isolated in separate areas of a Bay Area hospital desperately ill with meningococcal meningitis I found that all I could think of was how desperately I wanted to see and hold my babies…all of them. Holly and Zoë were the only ones I was permitted contact with. Brief visits with them dressed up in gowns, gloves and special masks to protect them from the infection that nearly claimed their little sister and sidelined me. Weak and in pain all I wanted to do was be with my children and hold them…kiss away tears and fears…just breathe in their presence. The days I spent in the hospital alone in an isolation room I found myself crying less from any pain I was in but more out of the desperate, primal need to be with my children. When my doctor and Jodie’s doctor finally allowed me to visit Jodie I remember how my nurse tried to convince me to wait a little longer fearing that I was to weak to manage traveling from one end of Valley Medical Center to the other where the PICU was located. He couldn’t have possibly understood the strength of a mother…but then again I did collapse into bed and slept a solid nine hours after returning from my brief fifteen minute visit. Contact with three of my children was good medicine, the best medicine but it did not cover the pain and the ache I felt for Abby and Daniel back home in Manteca.

A friend, a talented co-worker, a mother of three gorgeous, young children, a beautiful woman I know is desperately ill. She has been hospitalized and critically ill since the beginning of this month. Those who know her have been filled with anxious worry for this beautiful young woman and her sweet family not knowing what else to do but offer many prayers, support and comfort to her and her family. She finally had the strength to post an update sharing how desperate she was just to hold her girls again. My face was wet with tears reading her update last night because I get it, I know too well that need.

Just as I received word that she was being transferred to higher level of care in a hospital in the Bay Area, I saw this picture on my Facebook news feed. One of her ICU nurses wheeled her out of the ICU so she could have that which her body and soul requires to be healed as much as intensive medical care, her beautiful children in her arms before she was transported to the Bay Area. While many tests, interventions, surgery and the unknown of what kind of recovery she might have continue to cloud the thoughts of those know this extraordinary woman, it is our hearts desire that she will be home again soon with her babies in her arms.

Praying for you Amy! Love you!