Sunday antics
A walk down to the mail box this morning with Bean to collect mail from yesterday. I lifted him up to open the metal box, and inside? Such cool housewarming CD's put together by the most wonderful Teri. You made my day, woman!!
Bean picked pockets full of acorns on the way back, and during his nap, neighbors we hadn't yet met stopped by to bring us divine blueberry banana bread and an open invitation to dinner.
And after a four mile run with DH, lounging in the backyard with family, soaking up the last rays of summer afternoon sunlight. Bean's giggle wild and heady with glee.
The unbearable sweetness of being alive
Two nights ago DH’s blood sugar (he’s type 1 diabetic) plummeted suddenly, without warning. It didn’t come back up, despite him taking several hundred carbs over the period of a half hour---and hovered nstead in the low-low double digits, just at the fringes of consciousness. It was one of those surreal times, when I could see myself from some other vantage point: my hair pulled up in a messy pony tail, going through the motions of wrapping dryer-warmed towels his shaking shoulders, pouring more juice, trying to remain calm and easy.
Every small shred of my being was at once saturated with the sweet intensity of my love for him, and the bitter taste of fear at the back of my tongue. Like the taste of snow or nickels, I think fear tastes like metal.
After a half hour we called the paramedics, because we’d reach that point where we weren’t sure how to proceed—not knowing if things were going to improve or worsen. As we waited, the moments stretched out in long arcs across the darkness between our little house and the ambulance somewhere moving towards us, its lights like an aurora borealis of red and white. When they came through the door nearly a half hour later, his sugar had just finally escalated to within the normal range. Still, his pulse was bounding and his blood pressure surged and waned as he shifted positions. But he was okay.
They couldn’t say why what had happened, had. They couldn’t know if it were some irregularity in the chemistry of his body or in the insulin he took. But he was okay, and we went to bed, exhausted, just shy of 1 a.m. In the dark of our room, with the moon spilling onto the floor like milk, I curled my body around his. His skin smelled sweet and warm in the dark, and his breathing soon regular and even with the onset of sleep.
You can’t ever be prepared for these moments that come out of the dark to meet you. You can’t ever know when they will come or what they will bring. Therein lies the lesson: remember the sacred sweetness of each moment. Bow down to it again and again with humility—reaching over and over towards the better part of yourself that can overlook of the fact that your loved one forgot to unload the dishes, or left a circle of soap scum in the sink after shaving again, and can see instead the wonder of who they really are: eyes filling with the fullness of a smile; heart spreading out the periphery of their hands.
This much I now know:
2) That there are so many amazing, talented and wonderful people that read my blog. Some I’ve known about…others, I’m excited to explore. Your feeds are now all on my reader! Look for me, I’ll be commenting on your blogs this week.
3) I’m also in the process of including all of your links on my sidebar, but right now my in laws are here so it will have to wait until I have uninterrupted internet time.
4) Summer is suddenly dissolving at the edges: the last sun drenched stretching out between chilly mornings and evenings where the dusk lasts for hours.
5) The Eastern field has a maple tree with leaves already washed in vermillion, and the grass is higher than my waist.
6) I passed the test with only a small flash-back to my high school test taking fears, and a very early morning.
7) My classroom is starting to look like a place where kids might like to learn: a cozy library is taking shape, a center for science investigations and for art. Yet I still have an endless list of things to do. This is what every single day is like as a teacher: always wanting to accomplish more than is humanly possible.
8) And this: I hardly ever check my stats, but I did recently and nearly died laughing at the search strings that lead people here. Really. Worthy of a post by itself. See?
rss what?
It has been brought to my attention that there is an easier way of doing things! Easier than routinely clicking through all my bookmarked links (a list that far exceeds the hodgepodge of links I’ve pathetically compiled in the margin, which has begun to spill over here, and still is vastly incomplete—I have a case of sever blog love, it seems) every single day, sometimes repeatedly. Apparently I can just use an rss feed reader. Duh.
Okay. So maybe I am the only person in the blogsphere that dosen't already use one. Stop laughing.
And then help me. Leave your rss feed in the comments. Pretty please?
If you also leave your website url, I’ll add you to my sidebar and we’ll have that going for us…which is nice.
EDITED TO ADD: By rss url I mean, leave your website link with the additional rss feed information so that I can plug it into my feed reader without doing any work at all. Yes. I'm lazy. But I'm also 1) studying for a really aweful test I must pass in order to become certified to teach in this state, 2) whimperhing because I've started learning how to lift weights at the gym today--and did a lot of squats. ouch. 3) procrastinating about # 1, 4) sighing because I have oh, probably 500 books to sort through at school and sheesh, do you know how long that takes?
Monarch.
Purple stars.
Leaf lace.
Rock.
Fall on its way.
Bark.
Moss in fallen log.
Field flowers.Capturing a childhood moment (throwing rocks)
We take Bean to a small stream burbling under the shade of pine trees. The pebbles are smooth and round, bits of fossilized choral, quartz, granite sparkling in the sunlight. All three of us are barefoot at the water’s edge, mud pressing between our toes. We show Bean how to toss in rocks; this primal thing that everyone seems compelled to do near water. All three of us grin as each one breaks the surface with a splash.
Up the trail teenage boys are jumping into a swimming hole, their muscled backs slick and tawny in the afternoon light. On the rock above them, a girl sits, laughing, her toes dangling in the current.
I watch Bean go for the big rocks. Rocks the size of my fists and heavy. He carries them with both hands and hurls them inches from his tiny toes. Each time a grin spreads out across his face like sunshine; he is completely enthralled, so sure of himself. He’s grown so nimble running barefoot on our land, and here, in the dappled shade, he seems suddenly so big to me, as though it were only moments between this moment now, and when he’ll be that big---jumping off rocks into too-shallow water to impress a girl.
After an hour of navigating stumps and uneven stones, we come home, heading to the soft green slope of the back lawn, each with an apple in hand. DH and I play Frisbee, tracing long thermal -arcs between us in the air, while Bean climbs the wood pile, and then his tricycle, always craving the thrill of being someplace where high above the ground.
As the sun sets, I rock Bean to sleep. The warm sounds of the summer evening drift up: crickets, tree frogs, and the whirring of the fan. It is one of those days where I feel my breath catch in my throat: he’s growing so fast.
Too two.
The house is dubiously full of snoring. In the past hour and a half I somehow managed to put three humans of the male sex to sleep. Well, two, technically. The third one happened to just come into the bedroom where I was hunched over my laptop in the semi dark rocking our friend’s baby in his carseat while reading blogs, and the next thing I knew it he was on our bed and snoring. If only the other two were that easy! But Bean, in a fit of what can only be called jealousy, needed an extra-strength session of cuddling, pressing his small face against mine to be kissed over and over again while I rocked to him and sang. And the little baby, well, he did his little baby thing: squirming about a bit, and in general just living up to the proverbial witching hour. It’s been one of those nights that feels like some sort of sci-fi time travel film: “A glimpse of what your life would be like if you had two under two.†We’re babysitting our friend’s gorgeous little three month old pip, while they attend a wedding reception, and it’s been quite the head trip spend an evening with someone so small. DH and I kept sort of marveling to each other at all his tinyness. His feet! His hands! SO SMALL! And also, he just eats and sleeps!
It is also fascinating for us to watch Bean, who is now almost 1.5 years old, and 100% true toddler, around the baby. At first he sort of treated the little guy like maybe he was a new cat, interested, but not entirely. But when I took over a bottle feeding, Bean was no longer amused. He was sure he was being replaced, and he flung himself on my legs. He tried to take the baby’s burp cloth, threw his dish on the floor, and when DH tried to carry him off for a nap, he wailed in the most pathetic way possible, “Mamamamamamama!†Poor guy.
It has occurred to us that there is no way we’re having another baby for at least a couple of years—if not a handful. Somehow, though we both see the logic of having little ones close together, neither of us can quite wrap our heads around the idea of no down time, double the diapers, and bedtime routines that involve juggling small humans. We’re just not superhuman enough.
We’re the kind of parents who had to figure out that our kid might actually appreciate it if we BRING SNACKS with us when we go on errands. We routinely forget the diaper bag. We loose his shoes. (Really. I currently know where one of each of three pairs of shoes are, but haven’t the foggiest where their mates might be.) Sippy cups accumulate in the sink.
And we’re always late.
Therefore it occurred to me tonight that if YOU are a mom and you have two little rascals under two, I hereby bow down at your feet in complete awe.
Vanatage point
It is raining softly, and the sky is the color of goose down. The fan oscillates back and forth, blowing paper ellipses across my studio floor. I’m starting to love this space. This place for leaving tracks across the page of my heart, for wandering and wondering, both.
Finches dart from twig to branch outside my window, calling each other and shaking raindrops from their wings. I’m grateful for the rain today after yesterday’s warmth. The past few nights we’ve had heat lighting, illuminating our bedroom with stark white light, and the days have been so hot and damp, clothes stick and sleeping seems impossible. Now the air is cool and gentle, and raindrops fleck the wooden windowsills.
I’m gearing up for a shift back to teaching, to being pulled in hundred different directions. I feel myself wanting this abundance. I love challenge. I thrive when I’m pushed, when an economy of action develops out of necessity, when my days are bursting
The past eighteen months away from work have been something I needed down to my very core. I needed this time to realign myself, to relocate my foundation and settle again into the house of my spirit. Like a bowl of water I gulped eagerly after a long hike, this time away from work with Bean ameliorated my fractured creative self, grown used to being pushed aside.
Now I have a studio instead of an office—I’ve given thought to where I put my paints and tools rather than storing them in boxes under the bed. I’ve adorned the walls and sills with artifacts I love: rocks from Long Island Sound; shells from Puerto Rico, prints I’ve made, photographs in faded black and white. This is why I feel ready to go back to fullness of my work as a teacher: because I have recharged and grown. I’m going back to something I’ve done before, but my vantage point has changed.
So I’m looking forward to returning to the daily activity of meeting small minds and giving them handfuls of ways to learn. I love the opportunity teaching provides me: to think ever flexibly, to see each child as an individual, and to discover how I can help them learn. I learn so much from this.
It’s such an interesting opportunity: to take time off, and to return to something that you love. A bit like time travel, I settle into the familiar setting of the classroom, with younger, less experienced versions of myself in attendance, as I gather papers and sort through books.
I’ve often wondered if other people have moments like this---where they encounter themselves and discover how abundantly they’ve grown. Because of the very nature of growing (organic and chaotic,) we hardly ever have the clarity and calm to glimpse beyond it while we’re in the process. We’re simply doing it. But then there are occasional moments like now, where I feel like I’ve landed on a smooth rock amidst the turbulence---and can see below me the vast topography of where I’ve been.
I’m always shocked at this. To see myself, different than I was. To catch glimpses of younger selves; to find their outlines smaller than the shape of now.
Self Portrait: Psychology of a confined space
Every morning there are a few moments of disconnect: where my mind and body stagger towards each other like drunken lovers, in blurry recognition. The bifurcated pieces of me come back together under the shower’s steady spray. I linger there, in that tile enclosed space; often it is the only time I have unaccompanied, uninterrupted, with just my sore shins, bare skin, and slick hair. These first moments are almost a prayer, a meditation, an act of worship, bowing a the temple where body and mind intersect. It’s here, of course, that I have my best ideas. The most perfect, raw lines of poetry arise in my mind unexpected. Dreams come back to me in shreds, each piece jaggedly sewn to the next like the fabric of an old quilt. And then eventually the day creeps in. I hear noises from the kitchen below: the clatter of dishes being unloaded from the dishwasher, Bean announcing he wants more milk, DH making espresso, and almost immediately lists start to crowd in.
But for those first moments of waking, it feels like I’m teetering on the brink between two worlds, my face soaking up water and my mind wringing out dreams.
Sunday brain clutter
I went into my classroom for the first official time since I got the job. A big geometric room, with yellow paint and fairly new rugs. It’s still waiting for summer cleaning though, so other than sitting in the middle of it to draw a quick floor plan on the back of a used piece of printer paper, I didn’t stay. I’ll be there enough once it’s waxed and scrubbed, arranging chairs and labeling things. Instead, I went shopping.
There is a whole slew of outlet stores right down the road from my school, and I’ve been dying to go, but have never had both hands free. That is probably one of the greatest things I miss about my pre-baby life: both hands. Now it’s a rare occasion when I’m not schlepping Bean and/or his stroller/diaper bag, or some other baby related accoutrement. But today it was just me and my blue bag.
I discovered something depressing while shopping. Something I’ve kindof been made aware of, but have been ignoring: my boobs have shrunk. Yeah, I’m stepping this low. A boob post. But I’m a WOMAN, after all, and women are aloud to whimper and whine about such things—especially after my negligee drawer has only seen D cups for the past year. I’m now in what might be called the “nearly B†category. Did you even know there was such a category? Google it. You’ll see. There is, and I’m in it. I drowned my sorrows by spending a small fortune on glorious midnight blue on-sale bath towels, and savoring more of this wine (it’s cheap, and luscious: a bouquet of blackberries, and a sweet finish.)
Doing
1) Grinning because it's a perfect 70 degrees and sunny today, with no haze. The mountains seem close enough to touch---like perfect cardboard cut-outs on the set of a play.2) Planning to make kebabs, red wine & peaches and ice cream for dinner with friends tonight. I'm into cooking lately. Trying new spices (juniper berries & star anise), and loving blush wine (how can anyone not love something that color?) 3) Tiling (finally!) our backsplash with lovely white handmade tiles. A zillion special cuts, cement on my cut-off jeans, and we're one step closer to having a finished house. 4) Wincing when I smile because Bean wacked me in the eye brow with DH's watch this morning. Ow. He thought it was FUNNY when I started to cry. Grr.
So much goodness
Sweet cantaloupe for breakfast, like golden crescent moons on our plates, and tonight a dinner party with our neighbors. Red wine by the glass full, thai noodles, chicken grilled to perfection. Laughter and unexpected ease. Our neighbors are amazing people. The kind of people I always wished I had as neighbors, but never believed really existed. The kind who say: come over to my house any time, grab a beer if I’m not there or borrow my tractor. The kind who are professional chocolatiers (no kidding, they make amazing tuffles and live just down the road), mechanics, doctors, and athletes, who sit us down and tell us where the local swimming holes are, who to call to get our brush cleared, or how to handle the local skunks (walk right by them, pretending they don’t exist & they won’t spray.) The kind who make authentic German strudel, or go for 25 mile 'casual' Sunday bike rides. Yeah. That kind. How did we get this lucky?
Reaching
Tonight the room is supple with heat. On the kitchen counter, new red potatoes, yellow tomatoes, and a half-drunk bottle of bully hill wine---red and sweet. Outside, the dark ink of night pools up against window panes.
Since we moved to this hilltop, wild with poplar saplings and clover, I find myself thinking often of my dad, though rarely in the way I used to do---remembering small fragments of the life I knew with him at its center. Now it is almost as though I’m catching glimpses of him right here beside Bean and me, as we ramble about the yard, walking with tall sticks, or finding small fossils. And as if they were some ethereal proof of this, dragon flies and butterflies as wide-winged as the palm of my hand, often follow us about, or settle near us on windy stems of grass.
It seems as though moving here, I’ve inadvertently moved beyond the bitter sweet of remembering—to some place that follows the improbable zig zag flight of finches towards the future.
I stumble over my thoughts tonight, wanting like I always do, to reach out and touch what the experience of loosing my father was, and never grasping more than empty air. As though the experience were a foreign film that I've watched a hundred times, and still the crux of the story remains a mystery: lost in translation between what the living mind can know and the spirit mind cannot say. He died four years ago, yesterday.
Outside moths with wings like frothy chocolate beat against the screen, trying to touch the light. Sometimes I’m angered by them: their innate stupidity sends them again and again up against the scorching heat of a flame or bulb, and in the morning I find their delicate corpses scattered on the sill. Other times I understand them utterly: that fierce longing to know what exists just beyond the grasp of all things knowable. In a way I am like them, throwing myself again and again at the mystery of death, trying to reach out and touch the light on the other side.
Self portrait as: trying to get the balance right
The morning after our fight feels exactly the way it does when you walk outside after a rainstorm: everything is washed clean, and light refracts from a thousand small droplets of water.
He looks different to me: maybe more like the person he really is. And as I watch him making coffee, I see that this is what marriage is: a process of holding the mirror up again and again for each other, so that we may see ourselves anew—and also, so that we may be seen anew. It takes both: to see, and to be seen, to become truly aware of ourselves—and despite the hurt of it, this is what we offer each other in the moments when we hurl words about in the narrow place of our anger.
I catch myself sucking in air, realizing that no matter how long we’ve known each other, I’ll only know a small sliver of who he is. This is why I’m grateful for our moments of tension---because they force something deeper to open, and for a brief moment I catch a glimpse of the him that’s bigger than the picture I already have.
It is so easy to grow accustomed to seeing only the part of him that is us. The person that picks up where I leave off, emptying the dishwasher, sautéing zucchini, running Bean’s bath, or the other myriad things we do together every day. Easier still to see him for the things he doesn’t do—the small, banal things that don’t really matter at all, that my mind alights on like a hungry vulture after a day spent giving, without time to myself.
Today I lie in the tall grass on the hill behind our house, all alone. The green is so vibrant here it almost sings: the foliage is such a riot of emerald hues, dense with insects and ruffled in the wind. I close my eyes and let go, feeling the earth spin.
I feel my cells drinking this solitude, replenishing the part of me that has grown sparse in the past few months, when every moment was jam-packed with responsibility for things that had very much to do with us, but never to do with simply me. I know he feels this too, this fierce need for time spent all alone doing things according to pure selfish whimsy. We both thirst for it, just as we thirst for each other, and this is the push-pull I think we’ll always feel. A struggle to find the balance between our separate selves, and the self that is sum of our love.
Without directions
What do we do here? In this place where both of us feel like we’ve reached the outer boundaries of love---when really the only boundary we’ve reached is the perimeter of our own large egos. The tool box is locked, and the delicate wrenches of kindness are inside.
In our culture it’s easy to interpret “successful relationship†to mean “effortless.†Friction doesn’t fit the definition we’re so often fed: the quick Hollywood snapshots of couples walking hand in hand, laughter always on the lips. Hurt—-that parabola formed at the intersection of anger and loneliness and loss---does not belong to the stereotypical shape of affection. And yet we find it here, close to us, filling the space between us, even though we are in love.
We feel terror seeping in, the moment we go beyond what’s comfortable. What if we can’t recover? What if the words we’re saying are really the basis of regret or unraveling? What if we can’t rebuild, continue, grow? Now in the heat and silence, there are large gaps between us as we look away, staring at the slope of the gabled eaves, the shelves organized with shoes and belts.
Why are we here? Away from everyone, this unventilated room is the only place where we can fight tonight with no one hearing. But really, why are we here, in the middle of this place, exchanging oxygen for anger? Because we are unskilled and unpracticed in this kind of action. Few share this part of the journey; when the rubble strewn mess of for-granted and regret collide.
We ache in this small space, trapped by our egos, and our inability to really reach beyond ourselves and meet the other. Shame drenches us, and makes us stubborn. In the balance of things we keep believing a loss of face is somehow greater than a loss of love.
So suddenly we’re there, at the breaking point. You’re walking away from me, too tightly wound, and I’ve given you nothing for everything you’ve tried to say. You’re starving but somehow I can’t offer you any bread of apology. I’ve taken yours and thrown it to the sparrows.
You stand to walk away, and as you do I finally break open, no longer caring about being heard or being right or being sad. The brittle shell around my heart breaks all apart and with the greatest effort I say it. Like Atlas lifting an entire world, I strain under the burden of my own weakness.
“I’m sorry,†I say, “For not giving you an inch.†Your body turns slightly, and you smile, just a little. Then we try again.
We do not know how to fight this way: one to one, face to face, navigating the battle map of our hearts, and this is our cultural loss. Personal conflict is always locked behind closed doors, a thing of shame. We’re taught never to talk about our family’s heartbreak, about the endless ways we hurt each other, and recover.
Yet all around us conflict is glorified in external ways. The media is saturated with constant acts of aggression. And we hardly stop to think about this lesson we teach our children, generation after generation. I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a link between our failure to share the unmarked maps of our personal conflicts with our children, and our failure as a culture to live together peacefully in the world. Each generation grows up just as unskilled as the last, in matters of the heart. Each generation encountering it’s own inadequacy in understanding how the mystery of loosing and winning, of giving and receiving, of selfishness and selflessness is contained within the greater mystery of love. Could we do better than this for our children?
Everything is at stake in the moment I reach beyond the brittleness of myself. And when you turn back, that smile quivering at the very edges of your lips, we’ve made it to the other side.
But it takes both of us to move ahead. Waving a white flag of apology does nothing by itself. Too often you say those words trying to end the strife before it’s started, before we feel ourselves raw and exposed, on the operating table of each other’s mercy. Too often, you say “I’m sorry†before either of us know what we’re really talking about, before we reach what matters buried beneath what matters less. It takes great effort and great risk to keep talking beyond apology, beyond blame, beyond embitterment, without walking away.
We stay. And now at the breaking point, we hover like surgeons, over the open wound of our growing love, attempting at once to remove the malignancy and repair the damage. We are untrained and clumsy, yet our effort counts for something, and after hours of this mess, we are sitting together on the bed. Your arms are around my shoulders, my hand traveling the contour of your knee. We are through the worst of it: through the time of where transfusions were needed, where openness needs to replace bitterness, and the chances of survival depended not on how much we were willing to loose, but on how much we were willing to give.
Now I write, because writing does something alchemical to experience; transforming it from a blur of things merely felt, to something better understood. I write so that I can remember—so that we can remember; my words bearing witness to the things we hardly ever say (that hardly anyone ever says), that are, in the end, the words that matter most.
From a family of writers
You know how it is when you get an email from someone and it’s so good you can’t bear to just click ‘save’? I got one like that from my older sister last night, and I have to share. She’s a sales rep for the uber-cool new woman-specific clothing company Lole (“Live Outloud Every Day), and she’s traveling through a whole bunch of Western states showing their new fall line. 9 days on the road. Dear Family,
Miles and miles under the belt, streaming across the lands of the Nez Perce. Cheyenne and Shoshone, the engine laboring under the cruise control as rolling hill and pass grind under the tires. It's amazing and not surprising that they call this the land of the big sky. It's breathtakingly beautiful. I can imagine those native faces crossing the waist high grass on horse back, moving swiftly and efficiently from summer to winter camps, leaving nothing in their passing but the slight traces of a camp fire pit. It's amazing what we've done to this country, and by we I mean us white folks. The mine tailing piles high, filling entire valleys in some places; toxic streams trickle from the fetid flanks and poison entire communities. It's so hard to take, this mix of breathtaking beauty and life-taking toxicity, Montana yet another state of juxtaposition, the awe-inspiring amazing with the equally deadly amazing.
I passed a forest fire today. Burning bright against the hills, smoke searing lungs of all in range no matter the air setting on the car air conditioner, fire fighters huddled against the shade of a helicopter watching the flames move ever closer no matter the effort of the air tanker above. This land is so wild it steals your heart; just like that kitten found behind a dumpster so weak and starving you have no choice but to take it in.
I am exhausted today. The odometer measures nearly 1500 miles so far. Tomorrow I drive north to Flathead Lake and Kalispell. To the cool of the mountains, a welcome break from the heat of the valleys, I will turn and twist, following the flanks of the hills and peaks that make this part of the world so famous. I have had only about four hours I can call my own so far this trip. I am a maniac for stretching my personal limits of endurance. Let's see, Kalispell is three hours drive from Missoula that means I can show three accounts, tour the town, stop at the local dive for lunch and then race for the hills, arriving in a blur to do it all over again. But something about this job inspires me to be my best and that is all I can ask of a job.
I miss my husband I miss my animals and most of all I miss the green, color so achingly hummingly green it hurts my teeth to look at. Out here, it's all brown: beautiful but brown indeed, interspersed with irrigated farms….
Good, huh? So are their clothes. I’m in love with several hoodies, and some of their pants make you look like you have the perfect ass, regardless of your actual ass. Check ‘em out.
I'm not saying
Either this gorgeous handbag is the real deal & an exquisite gift from my mother-in-law. Or, it is a knock-off that she bought on Canal street, after following a man who didn’t speak any English up seven flights of stairs to a back room in the garment district where she was locked into a room overflowing with bags, where she selected this beautiful specimen for a mere fistful of smallish bills. I’m not telling.
But I love it because it does far more than simply schlep all my stuff around: it makes my painfully boring black t-shirt and khakis fashionable, simply by being tossed over my shoulder nonchalantly. For this reason alone, I will now commence carrying it everywhere.
Didn’t think I was the type to tote Prada bag? I didn’t think so either. But then I though this might be just the thing I need to rectify my flagrantly pathetic approach to style.
I'm all about effortless fashion, people. And what could be more effortless than carrying a bag that can hold everything from diapers to lip gloss and still look divine?
Self portrait as an elephant
The giving, the always tugging, scrambling, jungle gym antics that my body has grown accustomed to, since him.
‘Here honey, you can hand mama the toilet paper, but no you can’t flush while I’m going. No, stop. Okay, four flushes is really enough.’
Banal things I never knew to cherish have become ornately choreographed two person acts.
I think of elephants, while we brush our teeth. Our arms like trunks, entwined each morning: his little hand holding my brush, while I frantically wiggle his brush around trying to get all four quadrants of his mouth before he grows board of the process entirely.
Or waking to his fierce affection: an inquisitive finger up my nose, perhaps, or a wet series of kisses planted on a partially open eye. My body is no longer really my own, though I try to claim it. My padded cup bras have returned, now that I’ve stopped nursing.
“They’re really small now, huh?†DH may have commented last night, the way one might comment on zucchinis.
I stand in front of the full length mirror looking at the geography of stretch marks, muscle and soft flab that my body has become, and feel the familiar disaffection rise like bile.
Then I try to remember: tomorrow I’ll wake, and before I’m fully conscious, my body will lift and carry me through a thousand small movements. I’ll kiss my husband, carry my son to our bed, press his tousled head to my cheek, and fend of his clobbering embrace.
Tomorrow I’ll wake, and my body, without being asked, will consent to the daily task of lifting and carrying, like an elephant bowing to permit a human so small, to clamber up onto her back.
More 'self portraits as...' here.
