Gaps to the Sky

On nights like tonight, the world feels simultaneously immense and intimate. Constellations emerge, careful and deliberate, threading the black canvas above. Branches sway in the winter wind, skeletal and stark, creating gaps through which starlight flickers and dances. The spaces between the limbs, stripped of leaves, are openings to something larger, something beyond my reach — yet perfectly within sight.

When I first became pregnant, fear threatened to swallow me whole. Its maw was chasmic, deep and unyielding, and I felt it pressing against my chest. I had spent my life anticipating danger, planning for every contingency, playing chess with the universe, moving five steps ahead at all times. Yet here was a force I could not anticipate, one that rendered my careful strategies meaningless.

I was forced to relinquish control. My body betrayed me with hormones that tangled with my mind, and my mind betrayed me with spirals of fear. I remember one night, pressed to the cold bathroom tile, lifeless and trembling, realizing something crucial: in this life, you can act from love, or you can act from fear. You must act regardless, but which path you choose matters.

I chose love.

That choice became the foundation of everything. Love was the branch I nurtured, the branch I leaned upon when terror threatened to topple me. And yet, even with this conscious decision, my mind sometimes drifts. There are evenings when I berate myself for losing focus, for forgetting the horizon’s prize while I wrestle with minor anxieties. Yet clarity comes, always, in quiet moments. In the warmth of a bath, with water pressing against my skin and the world reduced to soft murmurs, I remember who I am, and what I have chosen to protect.

Now, I scan my son constantly, not because he needs me to, but because my instinct cannot help itself. I look for knots, weaknesses, rot — dangers that might threaten him in ways I cannot yet see. I anticipate, I strategize, I plan. But then I pause. I see his hands clutching a sword, his eyes tracing lines of story, his mind inventing worlds. I see the boy I once was, hard steps taken through a forest thick with danger, moving past hopelessness toward wonder.

He is secure, deeply rooted in love, nurtured along a stem I have carefully tended. He does not yet know, and need not know, the weight of choices I made for him. He blossoms freely, his growth unhindered, sprouting into curiosity, resilience, and joy. In him, the terror that once threatened me loses its power. The gaps through which stars shine are not voids; they are opportunities, spaces to breathe, spaces where life reaches upward toward possibility.

Motherhood has reshaped my understanding of fear. It taught me that control is an illusion and that love is an active, deliberate force. You cannot protect a child from all harm, nor can you dictate every step. But you can guide, nurture, and provide the roots from which courage grows. The gaps in the branches, the spaces I once feared, are where the sun enters, where air circulates, where the future takes shape.

Watching him, I understand that my previous life of calculation and foresight was preparation for this. All the years spent strategizing, anticipating, and planning were not merely exercises in control; they were lessons in letting go, in learning to trust growth. The child I am raising is proof that when you choose love over fear, the seeds you plant can thrive even in the most uncertain soil.

And yet, even now, I sometimes forget where my heart is nested. I find myself lost in worry, imagining threats that may never come. In those moments, I return to the simple truth: love is the branch I nourish, the branch that supports me and him. It is in this quiet, steady choice that clarity lives.

Tonight, the stars peek through the gaps again. I watch my son, immersed in his books, strategies, and imagination. I feel a deep, unspoken gratitude. The branches sway, the constellations remain, and the gaps — the sacred spaces where growth occurs — remind me that life is not about filling every void but about creating room for possibility.

I see the boy I have raised, the reflection of the child I once was, and the promise of the person he will become. I understand now that gaps are not emptiness; they are openings for life to breathe, for growth to unfold, for wonder to thrive. In those spaces, he will learn, he will stumble, he will rise. And I will be there, nurturing the branch that guides him, allowing him to reach for the sky.

In this, I find peace. In this, I find love. In this, I see that the gaps are not failures but invitations — openings for life to surprise, to grow, to thrive. And I know that, at last, I am doing the right thing.