“If you think about, anything could befall a baby butter bean.”

“When my daughter was born, my mother became the smartest woman in the world.” 

I was not clever enough to make that observation. That was from Julie Benkoski, mother to three beautiful girls and a dairy full of cows.

Sixteen years ago at Piedmont Hospital, my new son lay beside my bed. A little burrito swathed by a standard issue baby blanket lying in a clear plastic tub. With my dinner tray in front of me, I picked up the milk.

I remembered grade school lunches drinking out of an almost identical carton.

“You’re a baby butter bean now, but someday you will sit on a bench in a cafeteria and drink milk out of a carton. Cartons like this with a cow on the spout.”

 I looked to the wee burrito and then to the cow on the carton. It hit me.

 They don’t come knowing what a cow is — do they? They don’t know of cows, Cadillacs or carryon luggage. In heaven’s name, why hadn’t this occurred to me before? Then the burrito started crying which fortunately drowned out my heaving sobs.

 Motherhood.                                      

For me, it was not so much about conquering a huge learning curve. It was and is a never ending battle of overcoming every rational and irrational fear of anything that could befall my baby butter bean.

What if he cries? Don’t babies do that often? 

Will he crawl into kindergarten? At fourteen months old, he was content to roam around the nursery on all fours. Other mothers started to talk.

 Will he ever stop picking dandelions on the soccer field? What he fumbled the football? 

 He fumbled the football. I was suddenly initiated into the sorority whose membership consisted of every mother of every ballplayer who lost grip of the ball or missed a field goal since four panels of a pig’s bladder were laced together. In such situations, moms can overhear lots of colorful talk, have a knot the size of a football in their stomach, yet appear as if they are sitting at home watching the oven self-clean. God-given fortitude in moments of trial, I guess. 

You would think by age 30, if a burrito came into your life, you could handle it. Each night laying him on his back, I prayed he wouldn’t roll over — which of course, he did. Coming into him lying face down, I grazed his bitty back with my hand to feel it moving up and down. Up and down. He breathed.

I thanked God and stumbled back to bed.

 Baby is now sixteen. You would think having reached mid-40, I could handle it. Now while sleeping twisted up in blankets, he’s become a rather large burrito looking like one that might hang outside The Taco Stand. Many nights I wake up and steal into his room to see that the burrito made it home. I thank God and stumble back to bed.

 It takes courage to be mom. To laugh in the face of “you’re means” and to abandon a cartload of groceries at checkout — refusing to be held hostage by a wayward child. 

Mothers take heart. Doesn’t the bible say perfect love casts out fear? No, nothing could be that simple. Surely it must mean that in love, all fearful mothers can joyfully cast out the perfect burrito.