mother dear

They were arguing, this time louder than usual. It was the same debate that seemed to have crept up again and again over the past several months. Only now, it was worse. She threatened to leave him if he didn't grant her this one request. Leave him, tearing apart their family and their home. She loved him, and her childern, but she desperately needed just this one thing. Just this, she thought, could make it okay. Could make her okay.

It was late, almost midnight, and the kids were all in bed. But the arguing had woken one, the young girl. She crouched at the top of the stairs, listening, tears trickling slowly down her thin red face. She was so scared, so unsure. Unsure if her mother would still be there in the morning, or if her mother even loved her. The child needed her, so desperately, but wondered how much longer she would be there. How could she threaten to leave? A mother couldn't do that, not if she really loved her family.

But the mother did love her child. She loved her whole family, desperately, and knew that her threat was blank. She never really would have left. Not really. She couldn't have - she loved them too much. But the abuse she had faced years ago, throughout her own childhood, had caught up to her. To a child, a mother is a protector. But hers had not been, had only added to the threat, and she knew that other children faced that same terror now. And, while she hadn't been able to protect herself, she could protect them. She had always provided safety for her own family, but that wasn't enough. No, she had to do more, to provide that surety for every child who lacked it. It was the only way.

The child, however, didn't understand this. Not then. She was only eight years old, and knew little of who her mother really was, of what she had faced. But, with time, she learned to understand. Slowly, pieces of a shattered life, an ugly life at times, began to fit together, finally forming a magnificent whole. Her mother had always loved her, she knows this now. But the woman had known so little of love in her early years, she struggled to convey its full depths to her own children. But now the child knows, and has forgiven. But what really is there to forgive? She had simply shown her how to love, to love all, and to provide for those who need it most. And that is her greatest gift.