Warm.

I have always been a mama's girl. My mother worked when I was little and when she was not working, she found plenty of things to keep herself busy, like sewing our clothes, baking cookies for our class, and working on taxes. I remember needing to be close to her and lying curled around the legs of her office chair as she punched numbers into an ancient and loud calculator. I would feel safe and warm and eventually fall asleep there.

When I met your dad, he gave me the same feeling. He, as a slightly scrawny skateboarding 17 year old, made me feel like I could just float along holding his hand and that his hand in my hand was all I would ever need. I remember 5 months after we met, planes slammed into the World Trade Center and he held me, as I cried in my living room. We were so young but I remember thinking, none of that bad can reach me as long as I can find this safe place again. So I kept him and 12 years later, he is still my safest hug.

When I became a mother, I expected that hugging my children would feel that same, safe way.  In the beginning, your children don't "chose" to need you. They just do and you are the one that can feed them, keep them warm and put them to sleep. Now that you are both older, the best feeling is when you willingly, without me asking you to, run into my arms. You both give such tight hugs. But the tables have turned. Your hugs do not make me feel safe. They make me feel vulnerable. Having children is the most terrifying thing I have ever done, making me lie awake in the night, listening to the rain fall and wonder how I can ever free myself of this blanket of worry and fear that something might happen to one of you. Or to me. That I might leave too soon and miss it all. When I hug you, I a send a silent wish into the air, "Please let me hug these beautiful creatures for my whole life. Please let them stay healthy. Please let me hug them when they are mothers themselves. Please let me hug them when they are grandmothers." 

But I can see in both of you, the way you relax when I hold you, the way your bodies go limp in our hugs that you are both mama's girls as well. So I have to push all the worry away and focus on the way your arms barely reach around my neck and your feet hit the same place on my jeans because in not so many short years, the hugs will come less and less. I do hope though that you both know I have never done anything as magical and fun and beautiful as having you and even though the love I have for you makes me feel very vulnerable, I would not trade it for anything. I will always be a safe place to land.