14 October 2009

a mother's love

Ask any mother (or father) and they will tell you there's nothing they wouldn't do for their children.

I didn't realize the full force of this in myself until recently.

The other morning, as I was checking on my daughter and giving her a cup of milk to have in bed, I noticed a big, black, creepy spider crawling on her bed, coming so close as to even crawl on her face. It continued on down the front of the bed to the floor, but not before my heart went from a just-getting-up sleepy beat to a full-fledged fight-or-flight, I-just-had-12-cups-of-espresso-in-a-row type of beat.

I have never liked spiders. In fact, the term arachnophobia pales in comparison to what I feel around them and towards them.

So I ran from the room.

But before you judge, I ran from the room to grab fistfuls of Kleenex. And then I came back.

The creature was still there, black, thick, long, legs scurrying down to the ground. I made a desperate lunge, but didn't quite get it and almost lobbed the thing on A's face. A, to her credit, did not freak out but I think she was concerned why her parental figure was having fits of paroxysmal gasping over seemingly nothing.

The second attempt worked. I ran with my thick wad clenched and crunched up in my hand (I hope you don't need the explanation that I needed a thick wad so as to not feel the spider in my hand after I had caught it), ran to the bathroom, and flushed it triumphantly down the total.

I then ran back to bed and tried to calm my clamouring heart and gasping breath. I did what any wife would do after a catastrophe and called my husband who, to his credit, did not laugh. At least not to my face.

A small event you might think. A personal overcoming of epic proportions, I tell you. Something that would have never happened if I hadn't care about A more than my own fear.

A mother's love.

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