Nostalgia For Babies

I adore the people my adult children have grown to be. I appreciate not being constantly “on” and having more choice about how to structure my time. Though retirement is still several years down the road, I’ll tell you what my dream is for those years. I figure I’ll have time for more volunteer work, and the gig I want is to be the person who sits in a rocking chair at the hospital, holding and rocking the preemie newborns. At times I do miss the closeness of young children in my arms. I guess I’ve felt this way before because I just ran across a poem I wrote around the time my youngest graduated from high school.

**

Time Stole My Babies

My babies have been kidnapped
a little at a time
removed straight from my arms
by time itself.
In return I’ve received
adults who give me
reading suggestions and tell me jokes,
who hold my heart as much
but who do not fold up
into the space of me
as did the babies who are gone.
There’s no ransom
I can pay to unempty
my lap.

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