Counting Breaths

In August of 2007, I moved from Gilbert, Arizona to Logan, Utah to attend college at Utah State University. I was excited and nervous and anxious for the adventure ahead. I had no clue what was in the future for me but I was confident that Logan was where God wanted me to be. (Thank goodness, because if God wanted me to be at BYU then it would have been a real trial of my faith! ;) While I knew that I would live away from home for a time, in the back of my mind I always thought that I would eventually move back home, even if it was just for a summer. I never moved back. My mom wrote this letter to me on that last August night I called Gilbert my home (almost six years ago!) and I cherish it to this day. 

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Every night since September 7, 1989 when I brought you home from the hospital to our town house in Walnut Creek, California, I have counted your breaths as you sleep. When my friend Stephanie, a nurse, asked me once what number I counted to, I realized that I wasn’t really counting your breaths as much as I was just making sure there was a good, steady, rhythm. After counting breaths, I would kiss you and whisper, “Good night, Annie, you’re such a good girl,” just in case it was really those words that made you that way. I have received so much peace and comfort just watching your bed covers rise and fall, rise and fall, to a steady beat throughout the years. I wonder how many breaths I have watched you take?

            When you were eighteen months old, I returned home to Walnut Creek after witnessing the last breaths of your three-year-old cousin, Marie, in a hospital room in southern California. You were napping on the bed of my friend Lisa, who had been caring for you during the days I was gone. I was so excited to see you, and I cried because each of your breaths at that time was particularly miraculous and sacred to me.

            I have loved watching you throughout your life as you grow and breathe, dance and breathe harder, and run and breathe even harder still. Each breath is so full of life, and wisdom, and energy, and love, and joy, that you have taken my own breath away on many occasions. I have particularly rejoiced as I have sat close to your breathing at church, or at camp, or in the temple, when both of our hearts were near bursting from so much breath and life and light.

            So now, as you go away to college, I will lay awake at night counting my blessings with gratitude that even when you are away, I can still count your breaths. 

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Even though I'm over a thousand miles away from my mom and have not been with her for the last six Mother's Days, I am grateful for her and for her love and support and her phone calls and friendship (and facebook stalking skills). I am also grateful for Jack, whose breaths I now count. (Not OCD or creepy, by the way).

Happy Mother's Day!