Lullaby

Sometimes the May Queen wakes up crying. She has growing pains in her legs, just like I did, and my mother before me. I remember my mom coming into my bedroom and rubbing my legs until I fell back asleep, and now I do the same thing for The May Queen. I never resent this time with her, because I know that, unlike when she gets up 5 minutes after I've laid her down and she's saying she needs some cough medicine or something else, that she really needs me. I like that I can bring her comfort. Her crying is hard and frustrated. She heaves in great gulps of air between her wails. She pulls her long legs up to her chest. So I rub and I shush and I sing. I sing her the lullaby that I sang to her every night when she was a baby. The lullaby that I went online to learn all the words to so I didn't have to hum through half the verses. The lullaby that she doesn't want me to sing to her any other time. The lullaby that once, when she was about a year and half old and we were on an airplane and she was so tired and crabby and fighting sleep as she looked out the window, she finally looked at me with heavy eyelids, wrapped her arms around my neck and asked as she snuggled into my cheek "lullaby?" I held her and rocked and sang:

Lullaby and good night, with roses bedight
with lilies bedecked is baby's wee bed
Lay thee down now and rest, may they slumber be blessed
Lay thee down now and rest, may they slumber be blessed

Lullaby, and good night, thy mother's delight
Bright angels around thy cradle shall stand
They shall guard thee from harm, thou shalt wake in my arms
They shall guard thee from harm, thou shalt wake in my arms

When she finally falls asleep I watch her face, now relaxed but still streaked with tears. I watch her belly rise and fall with her breath, now controlled. I pull the covers back over her legs, now still. I kiss her cheek, still wet, and sneak out of the room with one last longing glance at her form under the blanket, once so tiny, and now so big.