“C’est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose qui fait ta rose si importante.”

“It is the time that you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important.“
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

Three Years of Motherhood: No Handbook. No wisdom, prize. A tally:

On one hand, three (times two) chocolate cakes. Three hundred sixty-five (times three) sunrises, intentions. Baby Mozart, Beethoven. Jazz. French. Museum Sundays. Baby Yoga Saturdays. Montessori. Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner. And Snack. The good strawberries. Crustless bread. Fiber, calcium, protein. Spinach! Slipped into omelets and homemade pizzas.  Library cards, more books than shelf space. An actual piano. Cars, and cars, and a day at the station to see actual trains.

On the other hand, three hundred sixty-five (times three) sunsets, and thousands upon thousands more failures, of insight, and patience. Low reserves. Of milk and toilet paper and underwear and kindness. Missing socks and mittens. Lost temper, lost note about Pajama Day. Insufficient kisses—distracted ones do not count, nor does half attention. Failure to stop quivering chins. That has been the heaviest.

Before it took on a religious connotation, the word sacrifice meant “the offering of something precious, particularly a life, as an act of propitiation, homage,”

The offering of a life. Long days, short years. Shorter nights. New sweaters for ever-shortening sleeves. Short on cash, laundry detergent,

short, terse answers to questions about life, bedtime, and the colours in the sky: “Look!” Often, I didn’t.

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose.”

I did offer my ability to draw roses,
my hand to cross the street,
my pillow to fight the dark,
bitter medicine to heal,
chocolate after it to console,

stickers and kisses and tape to mend anything that broke,
books and a storybook voice,
a singing voice (rejected, rightfully).

I offered my shoulders,

to see the lions at the zoo,
Daniel the Tiger at the fair,
to climb over fences and onto walls to watch the sunset,
to reach apples and apricots on high branches of trees,
to climb trees.

One morning I had nothing more to offer. I sat on the floor, and they offered me their stuffed animals.

No tally.
They won.