Sweet Love

Sometimes love aches.

Not in the way that sore muscles ache two days after some overachieving workout, and not in the way my head aches when it's 2:00 in the afternoon and I somehow missed my morning coffee. Those are such unpleasant, even painful kinds of aches. I'm talking about an aching that is good and sweet and makes love feel so completely tangible.

I felt this just now as I tucked my children into their beds.

It felt like something swelling in my belly, twisting and surging, looking for a way out. It pressed hard against my chest, working its way up to form that lump in my throat. And then I could taste it in my mouth, like some changing mixture, at once all smooth and sweet and velvety, and then salty or sour or something else. It tasted like winged hope and wishes on stars and on-my-knees gratitude and wonder, mixed with die-for-you protectiveness and what-if worry and just plain fear. And I knew it would push its way to the surface, one way or another, sweet or salty.

But if I had let that bitter part of this aching mother's love lead the way out of me, past my lips, it would have turned itself into a sob, a wail, something sad or afraid. So instead I swirled it around and around until it was like honey again, and I breathed it out into kisses on cheeks and foreheads, and sent it from my fingertips onto gently rising chests and through silky strands of hair, and whispered it in murmers to sleepy, small ears.

And that deep, sweet love ache pulled itself back down into me where it always settles, anchoring me, until the next time it churns up from its big, cream-and-sugary vat, catching me offguard, and I'm once again completely undone by it.