You rub one of my ears with one hand, while you hold one of your own ears in your other. I rock you back and forth in the chair, the steady clicking of the wood infusing itself into the sounds of bedtime. Three years old, you sprawl across the chair. With a sudden inhale you yawn fully.
You yawned like that as an infant. Your mama and I would smile in delight. Yawning was one of the first things you could do — before talking or walking or even focusing your eyes. Your lungs would fill, your mouth would stretch wide, and your breath would flutter back out into the world around you.
We would watch you, mesmerized by your existence.
Rocking you tonight, I feel the rise and fall of your chest as you yawn. I feel the air in and out of my own lungs. We are so alike, my child, so oddly temperamentally matched given that I have no biological connection to you. We share the desire to draw the things we see in our heads; the frustration when it does not come out just so; the endless dancing in the living room. That breath, though, draws us even more deeply together.
The breath is never ours. It’s not our individual air. Our lungs and limbs and nervous system trick us into thinking we are Individuals, separate from one another. Our bodies con us into believing we survive on our own.
The air is never ours. Each breath in keeps us bound to one another. We are of the air. We are of the breath. We do not own it individually, or even collectively. We are graced by a god to be a part of it.
Yawn away, my three year old fighting sleep.
This Family is Sacred 