A Mother's Vigilance

I’m chasing my chatty 7 year old on her bike, a weekend ritual we call “run/ride” — run (me) and cycle (her). Heading to football practice on this particularly fresh and dewy spring morning, relishing this new level of mother running that requires my sweat, she skids to an eye-widening, gravel spraying stop.

Our local pond’s swan family crossing the lush common — Mama: eyes narrowed, endless neck dancing with the periphery, daring anyone to step closer. Eight fuzzy gray cygnets: stumbling through her steady wake. Daddy: trailing behind, hissing at the handful of local spectators, reiterating the leader’s stance.

I can feel the fierce tenderness of the scene. A mother’s vigilance — the constant tending, nurturing, protecting… and the vigilance I’ve felt in the unrelenting keeping of the beat, a mother’s truest work, over my years of raising two children.

Mama swan, I see you. I’m also coming to know this feeling in a new context — caring for myself with vigilance, fierce tenderness — and it’s deepening my understanding of how to care for my children and, more important, how to know them. I feel a bit like those sweet, wobbly cygnets as I try to acknowledge and action this truth. I’ll keep practicing.

My sun sets early, enough for today
And rises early, I set my state
Clearing space — quiet pause to feel what’s needed
Looking up at the sky
Pressing down through my feet
Gathering fairy bouquets to dance in shadows on my kitchen table
Resting often so that my eyes can see these things
Being, breathing, believing
Grace
In myself —
This, they see
they feel
home in themselves

And just as
My deepest hope is to know
and honor
who they are
I must know 
and honor 
who I am 

So I practice
Vigilance
prayers of attention and care

And they grow and grow and grow
And so do I
Connected, knowing

May it be so.

How are you vigilant, for yourself?