Mother-dreams

Belly down on the lumpy pillow top mattress we bought at discount five years ago my right eye squished closed into the pillow, I open my left to glance at the clock. A red 5 flares back at me, the rest of the time obscured. A low rumbling from the baby monitor tells me my son still slumbers, snoring contentedly. I wait to hear my daughters coos: nothing. Thank you Jesus, I whisper, and close my eye. 

The night was full of dreams. Visions of losing my children. One minute I am holding both of them in my arms and the next I can’t remember where they went. Are they napping? Are they alone? Are they scared? Do they know Mommy is looking for them? 
A few celebrities make guest appearances. I ask if they’ve seen my babies. Then I tell them about my clients childhood histories. Stories of orphaning, of severe neglect, of drug abuse and assault.
In my dream a warm panic spreads in my chest, thorny and raw. All I can manage is to squeak out a cry for my children’s names. 

Now, in my half sleep state, I bolt upright when I hear Lucy’s small voice: once, then twice. 
She’s up. 
5:45 am. 
Ari is probably awake too – just quieter. He is like me and enjoys the feel of the blankets, the soft light of the morning sun behind the curtains and will stay in bed though awake until he’s ready. 

I’ve been watching an older documentary from CNN about medical marijuana. Parents with severely epileptic children (300 seizures a week!), failed by Western medicine, uproot their lives to move to Colorado to access a medical marijuana high in CBD. And then they are stuck. To leave the state with their child’s medicine – the oil under the tongue that stops their seizures and allows them to live and grow and learn – could get them arrested at the federal level to cross state lines. 
What would I do, I’ve wondered as I watched, if my child lived essentially catatonic because of seizures?
Is there anything I wouldn’t do? 

No.

There is no line I wouldn’t cross if my child’s life depended on it. 
No.line.

And then the news broke that hundreds of undocumented immigrants in Mississippi were arrested while their children attended the first day of school. A too-young crying face on a screen, broken voice and heart begging.

And days before that news about a mother and father shielding their infant from gunfire that killed and maimed dozens, orphaning their baby. 

There is nothing I wouldn’t shield my babies from. 
No.Thing.
No matter what it cost me. 

I don’t know why anyone wants to immigrate here. Anyone can be killed. At any time. In any space. 

In 1999 when Columbine happened, I sat in the car of an old friend, Susanna, and we marveled together, shocked and wordless that such a thing could happen.
That such a thing could happen here. 

It is 20 years later and a google search tells me that since 2012’s Sandy Hook 2,000 mass shootings are on record. 
So since 1999….double that? 
Thousands more shootings. Hundreds of thousands of victims. 

And mommies and daddies from other countries still see something better here for their kids. There is no line they wouldn’t cross. 

All of this churns in my mind as I wobble to my baby’s room, eyes bleary and back ached.
I can move from shock, anger, dismay and outrage in the span of the walk from one bedroom to another.

The truth is, it is easy for me to rage.
It feels good, honestly. Justified.
But that’s not the under-truth; the vast hole I fall into when I think about it all; the space that holds both powerlessness and fierce fight.

I am a trauma therapist. I am a mother.
There is no reconciliation for my mother-dreams: those I’ve had awake or asleep.

I am not even sure how to name the feeling now, as the wood floor creaks under my stumbling feet, as the old glass knob turns and sticks in it’s brass handle, as I look into my baby’s eyes and whisper “There is no line, no thing, I wouldn’t cross or do for you.”