Today I realized my greatest privilege. While having lunch with my parents, brother, uncle, husband, and our youngest three sons (what a privilege!), my husband said about halfway through the meal, "Where's Tommy?" Tommy is our youngest son at nearly three months old. I informed Gil that he was right there beside me in his carseat carrier. Gil said, "Wow, I hadn't even thought about him." Now to his credit he was helping with the other two boys on the other side of the table. But my immediate response was, "Well, you have that luxury, that is your privilege!" As I thought later about this interaction I came to see I had it completely backward. It is my privilege. It is my privilege to know the constant whereabouts of this sweet little babe. It is my privilege to know his schedule; when he needs a nap and when he needs fed. It is my privilege to provide him with all the food he needs to grow at this point in his young life. Yes, it is even my privilege to wake up with him in the wee hours of the night to give him this sustenance which also soothes him back to sleep. What an incredible privilege to get to come home from that lunch and hold him in my arms for an hour while he eats and squirms and smiles and kicks and finally drifts off to sleep. And then hold him sleeping in my arms. No place he or I would rather be. True, I am sometimes overwhelmed and even feel burdened by this immense privilege and wish that just once someone else could feed the baby, someone else could wake in the night, someone else could try all.day.long to get him to sleep. But it is my privilege and I will keep at it. I have an amazing husband who stands beside me, whom I could never parent without. But I get to privilege of being the mommy; of being this tiny babe's almost entire world right now. And I love it!
