Midnight Middle Mamas

It’s late and you turn in to a cold bed and fresh magazines.

You wonder why on earth you read more ways to burn fat when the fat you have has gone into hibernation for the long Winter.

And just when you had everything chronicled in your veggie tray in your fridge to plan to shed more pounds by adapting the new improved meals in the magazine you hear it.

“Mom? You come lay with me and talk wiff me?”

And you wonder how on earth a two year old can understand the verse in Judges 8:4 that reads, “FAINT YET PURSUING.”

And you are tired and angry that you snuck a bite or two or three hundred of chocolate cake and something about their sweet asking makes you want to give THEM all the cake their little belly can hold.

So before you can clip another recipe there they are, between you and Dad and try as you might, they want YOU in the middle and not them.

You ask them to shut the door so the light doesn’t shine on your face. They do and then two beady eyes are searching and asking please for the door so they can “see you.”

And on cue the wind catches the door and cracks it and two eyes smile like you had something to do with it opening and lie there satisfied.

For the time being.

One hand under your vanishing pillow is now asleep and so is Daddy and you get excited that you found a good place for your feet that are at this present time touching nobody. One small perk of this squishy situation.

And one snores softly and one whispers to themselves and you smile as you find that you are once again in the middle.

Men’s cologne greets you on the left and Johnsons and Johnsons on the right.

Life is so much about the middle.

You live day in and day out eating middles of sandwiches abandoned, you are in the middle of arguments, settling, praying. You even have the middle of the couch during devotions so the other kids can dangle some part of them off the arms while listening to Dad read.

There are middles of messes to clean when the culprit is hiding somewhere, middles of checkbooks when some has come and some has gone and middles of menus when you thought you had two more cans of tomato soup in the pantry for Wednesday night’s dinner.

And though we fight for the ends, somehow we always gravitate back to the middle.

And as I lie there listening to one steady heartbeat and one fast I think that the middle is not such a bad place to be.

Sure your nightgown will always be twisted and you’ll know to be on guard for feet sliding up, up and up to your face, and you’ll master the art of brushing baby hair off of your cheek with one finger,

But the middle is a good place.

It’s a good place to think and recharge and be thankful for being smothered by ones who love and need you to be, well , in the middle.

And the wind howls and Daddy coughs and the little asks what that was and you tell them it was Daddy and they proceed to touch your neck just to make sure you haven’t moved too far away.

You smile.

As if there was somewhere to move to.

And the chubby fingers move to your cheek for a squeeze and a pat and then to your closed eyelid for a poke or two, or three or four,

And then you move their hand off of your face to their side and shush them again.

And it’s the middle of the night and you slip out of two sleeping beauties to sneak downstairs with a pillow in hand.

It is cold and yours and that makes you happy.

You put another log on the fire and make a cocoon on the couch to blog for a few

About being in the middle.

And as the keys start to fly you hear it

The patter of feet down the stairs

And you walk upstairs to be the middle Mama again.

Which isn’t such a bad place to be

After all.