AS MOTHERS DO

Dear Spike:

You could not know it, but at this moment you are giving to your mother the very best Mother's Day gift you possibly could give. You are asleep on her lap, in the rocking chair in your room. And she, in turn, has slumped down in the chair for a nap of her own.

We celebrated last Mother's Day with an anxious excitement. You were due to arrive within weeks. Your mother had set to work sweeping and vacuuming, arranging the baby clothes in the dresser drawers of your room, and pacing around our home looking for things to set straight in preparation for your arrival.

Some call these sorts of behaviors "nesting." Fathers feel it, to some extent, but not nearly as instinctually as mothers do. And perhaps that says something about the bond moms have with their babies — bonds that can be closely emulated but never fully duplicated by dads. For how could we possibly know what it is to share one body? To be one being?

That is, in part, what makes Mother's Day so special. And it is, I imagine, why your mother never looks happier than in those times when you are asleep, resting on her belly, as close as you ever will get to those times in which your rested inside of her.

Maybe when you are older, you will come to your mother, on this day, and lay your head on her lap. Perhaps you will fall asleep there and she, in turn, will fall asleep too. I can think of no greater present you could give her than to rest there together, as one body and one being, if only for a few moments.

Love,
dad