Mommy Ninja

“Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.” -Carlos Castaneda 

I am the least like a warrior that anyone could be.  I am neither light nor fluid, and I don't even get the perk of being vain.  Just heavy and clumsy.  Okay, maybe a little vain.  But it's an intellectual vanity.

The baby gate and I had a disagreement about its location in space yesterday, and it won.  I fell over it in dramatic fashion while bringing dinner to the table.  It bit my leg severely, and I'm still a little gimpy today.  I had to ice a big bump on my shin for an hour and a half last night, but like Mrs. Whatsit from A Wrinkle in Time, I think I sprained my dignity worse than anything else.  And there was no liniment to be had.

This is one of the side effects of being a mother: after my inglorious disaster, I iced my leg while feeding myself and my baby dinner, then had to keep giving her the ice pack to chew on while she ran her after dinner, pre-bed laps around the living room.  Taking away the ice pack would have made matters worse, so I just sat there while my husband kept Maeve away from my leg.  And all I could think of was, thank goodness I wasn't holding Maeve when I did that.  Because what on earth does it matter if I did something stupid and got hurt? If I can still take care of Maeve, and she's okay, nothing really matters otherwise. 

The center of my universe has shifted distinctly.  I may not be a warrior, but I am like lightening when Maeve needs something.  She got half a plastic Easter egg into her mouth this morning and panicked; I jumped up after one worried squawk from her her and fished it out of her mouth in an instant.  Disaster averted, and I totally felt like the Mommy Ninja.  So there are some things I'm pretty darn good at.

I'm a Nobel Prizewinning Maeve cuddler.