...held close in her mother's embrace

Name, my heart is not racing, 
my gaze doesn't search the stars;
my mind doesn't dwell on 
what will always elude me.
Instead, my soul is silent and still, 
content as a weaned child held close 
in her mother's embrace.
---Psalm 131:1-2 (para. laca)

When I nursed my babies, there was a closeness between us, a symbiosis, that is like nothing I have ever shared with any other person. These tiny beings grew in me for months, dependent on my body for every bit of life. Then, the sudden violence of separation. From the warmth and closeness of the womb, shadowy and quiet, to the cold and glare of real life. From that moment of birth, of separation, when somehow one being becomes two people, the search begins. The unquenchable thirst --- for nourishment, yes, but for more. When a babe snuggled into me, it was also in search of that warm, dark place that had been home for so long. Every nerve, every sinew was laser-focused on latching on and settling in, drinking urgently, as if life depended on it. Because life depended on it.

And there were times when I was weary of it. The inconvenience of entertaining a toddler while nursing a baby, all balanced on a toilet in a dirty bathroom stall at McDonald's. The messiness of nursing. The on-call-ness of it. The soreness of it. The way brushing my baby's cheek could set off the craned neck of a Pavlovian response, feeding time or no. The Pavlovian response of my body to the sound of my own baby's cries. There's a weariness about it, no doubt.

But in a little while, or a lot, you and your baby find, together, that the time has come for moving on, to a sippy cup with a whale on it, or a cow, or to a bowl of strained peaches or rice cereal. Nursing, when it happens, loses the frantic searching quality of early infancy, and it is time. Your babe is not a babe, but a child, weaned.

And your child still comes to you in the shadows, nestles into you, head tucked into the space under your chin. You still wrap your arms around your child, you breathe together, you rock back and forth. There is no more frantic striving, none of the urgent needing of infancy. In its place, there is stillness. There is silence. There is contentment.