a daughter needing
“There will be a lot of hugs today,” she says, drawing me in with arms growing long enough to catch the world. Her brassy hair falls against my cheek and lightly tickles my hands as I press them into her back. I count her ribs, the knobby vertebrae in her spine. She feels strong, solid, warm beneath the tips of my fingers. But she is more that what I can touch. She smells of sun-warmed honeysuckle and sea breezes, and she carries the fresh morning light in her eyes, just a single, glinting dot. She is that feeling when good humor splits open a heavy moment with relief. She is my daughter.
“I’m okay,” she says, maybe because I’ve held her a little too long, drawing back just to show me her stormy eyes. I think the rain fell into her eyes the day she was born, or at least somehow she caught the hue of those late Summer clouds. “But there will be lots of hugs today.”
“Well, good,” I say into her shoulder, “because I need lots of hugs.”
What better way to say that sometimes close is all that will do; that certain days just feel vulnerable and crumbling; that the shadowy unknown threatens us with loneliness? Sometimes more than words, we need armfuls of each other.
A moment or so more and she releases me, drifting back to a movie she’s watching and a haphazard pile of nail polishes corralled where she sits on the floor. Absently, her back now to me and stretching long, she twists her hair into a wobbly top knot that somehow perfectly suits both her mood and her amusement. I can still feel her spine, that strong, solid bone, beneath my fingers. At three, before she left the room, Zoe used to crook a baby finger beside her wildly expressive eyes and say, “Be right back, Mommy” before toddling away from me to some distraction.
I turn back to the litany of motherhood lining up in my thoughts, swiping a damp washcloth over the counter tops, mentally noting stains, inventorying the pantry for supper, lifting the broom to sweep the floor. Motherhood is never only one thing; it is the things we hold in our hands and those we carry in sighs and hide in the corners of our smiles; it is handfuls and armfuls and soulfuls.
I slide the broom into hidden spaces beneath the cabinets, culling the crumbs into one smart collection, satisfied enough to hum. And suddenly she steps in front of me, wearing that quirky, tilting smile. “I told you there would be lots of hugs today,” she says, reaching for me. Over her shoulder, I can see the TV, some actress frozen in a grimacing pause. I lean the broom against the wall right where we stand.
“And I always have plenty of time for those,” I say, wondering if she could have any idea what she’s illustrating for me just by coming to find what she needs, just by so easily admitting that she needs it. I have come to see that I need God in just this way. On every vulnerable, crumbling day, I need armfuls and armfuls of God. I tend to overthinking, to reorganizing my own ideas, to strategizing, when close is really all that will do. The Lord is my Shepherd, David the shepherd penned. I lack nothing. …I will not fear, because you are with me (Psalm 23). I don’t need a better plan; I just need a better grip on the One who loves me. I need to pause the cacophonous, frantic pace of living long enough to open my arms again and again for a holy embrace.
I fold my arms around my Zoe’s shoulders, and quietly we breathe together. I feel her relax against me, resting all the weight of life in my arms, on my shoulders, into my hands. It’s as though for just a moment she stops trying to be all grown up and allows herself to be only a daughter still needing her mom. And then she steps back and smiles at me with those wildly expressive eyes that somehow still, without any words at all, say, “Be right back.”
I reach for the broom, wondering how long she’ll be this time, thinking only that it’s a wise thing to so boldly, openly, gladly be a daughter still needing.
