Gone

Gone are the times of sleepless nights
Baking cookies
Flying kites
Gone are the hugs with an I love you kiss
Tooth fairy
Such tenderness
Gone are the family dinners I made
Home baked bread
Tables carefully laid
Gone are the dreams of being at all their weddings
Their first kisses
Line dried bedding
They grow up they leave they mostly forgot
My sacrifices
There were a lot
There may be visits once every two or three years
A few phone calls
When a schedule clears
So many years of work with not a minute to myself
Now I'm like a toy
Discarded to a shelf
Picking up where I left off I will become
Who I was
And then some
Before children before life became what it did
As a single girl now
The free spirit I hid
Flowing forward in this river of time I will go
Being who I really am
They will never know
Only one child out of four who expresses such care
I keep in my heart 
Take it everywhere
In this world there is joy and the pain left behind
Pressing ever forward
In all the good I can find