Soft

Plans were in motion for months.  This was it.  My inaugural sojourn away from my kids.  A bus.  Two planes.  From my familiar Pacific coast to the East coast.  Away from my little family and into the fray of upstate New York.  More family was there.  Family I haven't seen in 24 years.  My hazy kid memories trickled back, and were fortified by new and old stories with Aunts, Uncles, Cousins.

My mom and I met in Seattle, and even with an all-nighter under our belts we talked and laughed nonstop on the plane.  I'm sure the guy sitting next to us would have rather been next to a screaming baby - and for the first time in 6 years we weren't accompanied by screaming babies.  Nobody needed a thing from us.  We had each other to lean on and mother hen when needed.  A neat little circle of giving and getting.  Balanced just right like only a mother and daughter can.

I'd never met my cousin Paige.  We started talking like we'd always known each other.  Stayed up late telling stories.  Connected by Petrangelo blood and a grain of salt.  We're lifers now.  I know it.

I came home to really dirty and perfectly content kids.  I worried like crazy that they were going to be weeping disasters without me.  The weeping was all mine.  They had an AWESOME time with their AWESOME dad and claim to have not missed me at all.  Is your hair blowing from the wind that just came out of my sails???  These girls.  My focus.  My all.  Them without me was "no bigs."  Me without them was one rail tie shy of a train wreck.  

There's a handful of life experiences that are reserved just for moms.  There is a place that only we can stand.  And a place that only we can get left standing.  It's a beautiful and heartbreaking place.  A place that daughters need.  A place that daughters walk away from to forge our own way.

Marguerite:  Well, I did miss soft.
Me:  What do you mean?
Marguerite:  I missed your soft tummy.  Your soft boob pillow.  Your soft hair.
Genevieve:  I missed cinnamon sugar toast.

So there you have it.  My purpose redefined.  Sugar, spice, and all things....soft.