Throwback Thursday

 I don't have the photo any more, but I remember it. It was taken shortly after we were able to bring home our firstborn, Paul Joseph, from the NICU; Dan and I had gone over to my parents' house for dinner, and a some time during the day I got to have a sit-down with my Mom. She sat on the oatmeal-colored wing chair in the living room, I was nearby on the couch with little Paul (with the oxygen tube still), and someone (probably my sister, Linda) snapped a picture of me and itty-bitty Paul. Mom wasn't in the frame, but she was there. I remember distinctly. I remember the outfit I was wearing (navy blue skirt set with white collar and cuffs), and though I don't remember the conversation exactly, I know what we talked about: diapers and feedings and sleep and baby acne. Just like Cathy and I talked about a couple days ago when I snapped this picture of her with her firstborn, Chlotilda Marie. 

I told her to mark my words: some day you'll be sitting with Chloe talking about these same things with her about her first baby. What a thought, huh? It's a funny thing about our great career: motherhood separates us -- Cathy is no longer under my wing, my own little bird, now that she has her own nest -- but in a beautiful way her motherhood binds us in a way we've never enjoyed before. You never really get your mother until you are a mother yourself! You never really see your child until she blooms into parenthood, a free agent creating a new family with her husband. Completely separate. Completely connected. Such an awe-inspiring thing to contemplate this carrying-on that mothers and children do, all the mothers of mothers of mothers before us, all the children of children of children to come. 

It's a thing to pray about! That all the good gets passed on. That all the not-so-good is forgiven -- but not forgotten: fixed. Gently and well. That God's Will is the Hand that braids and weaves the generations together. That all our children and our children's children, ad infinitum to the end of the world stay connected through Him, through the Faith, and through the Love that binds all. That's not much to ask, is it? Only everything.