My greatest fear..............

One of my greatest fears in life is something happening to me and me not being able to let my kids know how much I love them. It is such an irrational, primal emotion, yet it encompasses every mothers instinct. To claw, to scratch to love. To make the world a better place for these creatures we bought into the world. My friend Ellen summed it up best, when she had her first child she turned to her mom and said to her that she had no idea how much her mother loved her kids. Ellen knew she was loved but she never knew how deep those emotional rivers could run. Its a bond that I hope carries through my lifetime. I look at these two souls and feel like I know them so well, I see their future and while Ryan's looks like it will be a bumpier ride then Nikki's I know that I will always love them. I hope they will always feel loved.

I wonder if that love dims when they are going through the hormonal death throws of adolescence, where their immortality takes them to the edge of reason and beyond. When they come back with pierced nostrils and green hair will I look at them and yearn for the little soul whose hand dissapears in mine, who looks up at me with big eyes and wants to live with me through all the numbers or will I have the strength, the power to let them soar, set them free to discover their sensuality, hone their instincts and be the people I know them to be. I try and instill in them all that I want them to know, just incase I am not here tomorrow to show them, to remind them, to love them. How do I create a safe haven without me at the core, every parents worst nightmare, filling out their will and deciding who will guard these souls, who will make them strong yet love them with all their might. A double edged sword, how can I face the fact that there is someone who could do what it is I hope to do with my kids like my parents did with me. There have been little moments when I have brushed my immortality - 9-11, my car accident, flights fallen from the sky - who decrees whether its me or then. I never travel without writing a long letter filled with all I hope for them, my neurosis takes over, here I am this calm, together and oh so rational soul who loses all sense of sensibility when it comes to my kids. I can see through a storm of emotion and find the root, the core of the issue yet I cannot make myself defend them from a world without me in it and I hope to never have to.