Intersections

I've been up for nearly an hour already. It's just gone 6am. Using my time wisely, I'm writing about my other daughter, the one who would be almost seven now.

At 4:43am today, our bedroom door burst open and in leapt the LGBB - yes, leapt - announcing in measured statement, "I had another scary, scary, SCARY dream and I won't go back to sleep very well." How eloquent. Before I had a chance to fire up my brain so it'd make my mouth say something (I had done that thing you do when you're up and standing with your child trying to comprehend what they're doing/telling you even though you're still asleep, back there, behind you, in your soft, warm bed), I scooped her up in to my arms and began to head towards her bedroom.

"Can I stay in your bed for a li'l bit?" she asked. I turned and wandered back to my bedside and bundled her in.

The LGBB slept soundly after that. I, however, was suddenly chock full of the remnants of this lingering nasty infection and, despite my endeavours not to cough and not to sneeze and blow my nose, I couldn't comfortably remain sandwiched between my two loves and not eventually wake them.

So here I sit. On my favourite comfy couch, watching the night mist lift off the hills, revealing the bush and intersections of the three criss-crossing ridges right outside my window. They look so close I feel I could almost reach out and touch them. The mist melds and merges, a life within a life of its own it seems, and I am reminded of the nature of all things getting on with what it is they do. Birds are beginning to fly around (they've been chirping since before 5am), there is the faintest hint of colour now on the top of the highest ridge as the sun finds it. Funny, I muse as I sit here, close to my work on the book, I am reminded that it was actually my first daughter's death that showed me the profundity of life.

Of course, my very first (fur) baby, Pepper, lies in a rather uneasy slumber at the window by my feet. For a dog who is edging towards the age of 18 and who has lived her life 'roughing it' outside in all weather - she's tough, it's an Australian Kelpie/Dingo thing, that's quite obvious now she is ailing and still doing it - she doesn't seem too perturbed to be made to at least sleep inside during the day on a dog bed. I just can't handle seeing her on the hard floorboards, not in her arthritic condition. She has been with me since day dot of this journey to parenthood. That she is still here, carrying the lantern so to speak, humbles and amazes me. The loss of her from our lives - for she has been in it since 1995 - will be a keen and sore one, when the day comes. My mother-heart very much encircles this very special canine "child" and the locking of her gaze with mine (she always wins, I always look away first! - testament to how often I don't allow myself time to stop still from my busyness and business to simply  be in the moment with her/something) confirms to me that she receives that connection as well.

I've not been up this early in a long while. Two joys intersecting with one circumstance: our daughter is comforted and sleeping peacefully in our bed, whilst being awake at this time has allowed me to fill back up, even if just a little, with the beauty of my natural surroundings.

Timely, I should think.


Sharing via the Thursday Mother Heart linky at Seven Cherubs' blog.