My heart beats at an unknown rhythm. It's interesting that even my smartwatch has been signaling to me for a week now that my heart rate has dropped below the normal limit. And this, ever since the grandparents' angel came into the world. It's amazing how even technology has been overcome! Our joy with an angel's face and the smell of milk... I don't know what's happening to me. Does my heart no longer feel the need to beat? Or perhaps, simply, it has reached the haven of tranquility? I feel the peace flowing, seeping, and warming my heart. It pushes the blood at an unknown rhythm, which gives me the knowledge to see it with physical eyes. I don't even feel my breath anymore. I don't know if it still exists.
I hold him in my arms and don't dare to cry, lest my tear fall on him and wake him up. It's a peace I haven't known until now. A different kind of peace. A fulfillment. A circle that has closed. When we became parents, we were very young, and the children came bundled, somehow, with the fear of not knowing, with sleepless nights, with 'why is he crying?' 'what should I do?' 'but what if I don't do it right?'. And, amidst all these natural worries and fears, your nature is transfigured by maternal love. It's something sublime! Now, however, as a grandmother, my heart feels differently. I don't know yet if the word to describe this state has been invented. I feel like an old oak tree with an immense crown, under which they are hidden. My angels. Something like that... I'd better be silent. I'm silent, because I can't express it anyway. It just flows.
I am silent and watch the children who have remained our children, although they too have become parents (isn't it wonderful to see them higher up, on the next step of life?). I observe them surrounding their own little child with the same attention, love, fear, insecurity, even sadness sometimes, and exhaustion. How can you not find yourself in each of these feelings? And yet, now my heart feels differently. It perceives and expresses them differently. Lord, how can I put into words what You have placed in Your creation? Torrents of tears flow. Because I allow myself now. Yes! I allow myself, because Grandma's angel is next to his parents. He sleeps and smiles in his sleep, probably at the angels showing him toys in his dream, so he can rest (that's what my mother told me when I gave birth to my first child and I asked her: 'Who is he smiling at, Mom?').
There are so many new feelings! But above all, peace settles. It's as if you yourself are outside of yourself. A tranquility that simply comes from within, without me having put it there or desired it. I wouldn't even know how, because I haven't known it until now. I didn't know it existed... and yet, my heart embraced it with joy, as if it had clothed itself with it.
Jenica Gavrilă
Photography by Ryan Peck / pexels.com