What Matters

Maybe it's the heat. Or maybe it was the junk food fest she enjoyed yesterday at an over-the-top birthday party in Gwinnett. Or maybe she was tired. For whatever reason, Clara was a royal pain for most of the day. Crying. Pushing Margaret. Hitting Margaret. Not eating breakfast. Lying down in her chair at the table. And worst of all, provoking the cat and ending up with a scratch close to her eye. We either have to give away our lovely kitty or have her front claws removed. It's only a matter of time before she catches Clara in the eyeball. And then we will have a dog in the house, a seeing-eye dog.
And then, right as we were getting ready to go swimming, Clara started hitting Meowie with a squirt gun she got at the birthday party yesterday. So Clara didn't get to go swimming. She stayed in her crib most of the time Margaret and I were splashing around.
To cut to the chase, because I'm so tired:
When the girls were in bed, Clara asked me to stay with her while she was going to sleep. She hasn't asked me to do that in months, maybe even a year, so I decided to comply. I sat down next to her crib and stuck my hand through the slats. She took my hand and drew it under her blanket and started petting it. Then she reached her hand out and put it on my face. I was so tired, and thinking about what a horrible mother I am, that I started crying. She just looked at me and held my hand. She didn't seem upset or troubled by my tears. God knows, Clara produces a lot of tears herself. We are constantly making salty tear-water tea.
I think I was crying because it was so touching to me to have my little daughter asking for me to stay with her and holding my hand like one of her stuffed animals. She won't need me like this for very much longer. She kept peeking at me over her blanket to make sure I was there. (Margaret had been asleep for about twenty minutes before Clara's eyelids started getting heavy--thanks to the swimming.) I started singing "All the Pretty Little Horses," a song that always put Clara to sleep as a baby, and she gave out this shuttering kind of breath and seemed to relax, deeply.
It makes me miss my mother even more, because she was the one person who would be deeply interested in the kind of details about Clara I could provide for her. How Clara's eyebrows knit together in the Roberts scowl. How strong her little hands are and how much she likes to get her hands in dough of all kinds. How Clara makes a nest every night when she's going to bed. Gene says I do the same thing. And how blessed I am to have her. I tell Clara I waited my whole life for her to come, and she smiles and says, "Here I am, I'm here now."