Can You Just Hold Me?

My littlest guy is under the weather.

He started sniffling on our last day of vacation, which grew into a cough that he carried home with us. He hasn't been sleeping well, and is refusing to take medicine - only letting me slather him in oils and chest rub.

He is an energetic, independent, wild little thing most days. But when he is sick, he slips back into babyhood with ease. I hurt for his suffering, but these sad little moments are usually a blessing to me. He clings to me with the intensity he did as an infant, and I can see that despite the fact that he has become a strong-willed preschooler, determined to be his own man...his need and longing for his mommy is still within him.

I need that sometimes. When it dawns on me that my days of babies are over and I can't believe that it is, it overwhelms me. The feel, the love, the joy of holding your own newborn - it was a glorious, magical experience and it's heartbreaking to dwell on the fact that I will never do it again. (I try not to.)

Anyway, since he's gotten sick, he walks up to me several times a day with purpose, and through coughs and a sad little voice he says to me, "Can you just hold me?" OF COURSE I can. And I have dropped everything to pick him up and feel him melt into me while his sweet little hands rest on my shoulders.

But what really strikes me is the "just" in his question. He doesn't want medicine, he doesn't want a doctor, he doesn't want any sort of special catering to. All he wants is to be held. He wants to feel the comfort in knowing that he is loved and cared for, even when he feels awful. He wants to remember that there is a place - in his mom's arms, with our hearts lined up together - that he can still feel good.

What he doesn't know, is that it feels even better to me.