An Over The Rainbow Mother's Day...

It's Mother's Day and I'm a soggy mess.

My daughter-in-law has been at a homeschooling conference for the past three days, where allegedly an assortment of the Duggar family was scheduled to speak.  I've alternated between worrying that she will return home with a new resolve to out-birth the Duggars or that she will decide not to come back home, at all. 

Meanwhile, I've enjoyed every minute spent babysitting my four little grand-nuggets.  But lawdy, I'm tired.  

It takes an amazing amount of energy to keep a hollow-legged eight year old girl full of food while answering the incessant questions of an insatiably curious seven year old when I am constantly swatting the four year old's hand away from his crotch and educating a two year old on the benefits of pooping in the pot versus NOT eating boogers .

My house looks like it's been hit by a tornado; a M-4 tornado. 

The bedroom...

The toy closet...

And the kitchen...

If it looks like we had fun... we did.  Oodles of it.

We even managed to make a video worthy of America's Funniest. Keep your eye on the innocent-looking short guy on the front left...

(I really hope we win and Tom Bergeron sends us all to Disneyland. Otherwise, M-4 is gonna hate me for the rest of my life.)

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My favorite part of babysitting The Grands...?

Bedtime.

Not just for the obvious reasons, but truly, nothing squeezes my heart quite so exquisitely as the tucking-in ritual with my sweet-smelling G-babes...  reading the old, worn books I read to my sons once upon a time... singing endless verses of "Over the Rainbow" as angel eyes flutter off to sleep.

Last night as I searched for the perfect bedtime story, I stumbled upon this book:

It is a whimsical story about a Mama who rocks her baby boy to sleep every night, even after he becomes a grown man.  And each time she rocks him, she sings to him the same sweet song...

(Okay, maybe the part where she drives across town with a ladder and sneaks into his bedroom is a little bit creepy, but still... I get it.)

I ain't gonna lie... when I got to the part where the grown-up son went home, picked up his own baby girl and sang the song to her, I couldn't finish the story. My eyes got all misty and my voice got all wobbly and snot started running out of my nose.  

My G-babes looked up at me and wondered what in the heck was going on!

How could I explain to these precious ones that the last time I had read this book, it had been my own two little boys cuddled up beside me? What words could I use to make them understand the inter-generational love flowing from my heart to their Dad's heart and on to them?  The melancholy of realizing how quickly the years had passed?

I did what any self-respecting grandmother would do.  I faked a sneeze and told them it was time to turn the lights off.

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Their Dad came to pick them up this afternoon and they scattered like cockroaches.  Both of us were just too dang tired to hunt them down, so I crumpled  into my recliner and Lucas plopped down at the piano.

[I wish I could explain all the feels I feel whenever Lucas plays my piano.  It belonged to my paternal Granddad... my Daddy's Dad. Some of my earliest memories are of him pounding gospel songs out on those keys, surrounded by my Dad and his siblings... all of them singing at the top of their collective lungs, lifting their voices in perfect familial harmony.  It's that circle of life thing, y'all. Gets me every time.]

So there I am - enjoying the beautiful ivory tinkling of my firstborn - when all of a sudden, I look up to see Jacob, my youngest, sit down beside his brother and begin tuning his guitar.  

They ran through a couple of chords, shot me a grin and began to play "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".  

Our song.

The song I sang to them throughout their growing-up years.

The song Lucas and I danced to at his wedding. 

The song that never fails to bring back memories of freckled-faced little boys and bedtime snuggles.

There they were, two beautiful men who once shared my heartbeat... together at my Granddad's piano, playing an impromptu love song to their besotted Mama.

Amid the chaos of the weekend, it was such a moment of absolute perfection...

For as long as I'm living, my babies they'll be.