It doesn’t go away.
It doesn’t get “better.”
Part of it passes, falling away behind you. Then, one day, you stop moving and it catches up. It’s right by your side again and all around you and as far up ahead as you can see. And it’s fresh. It feels like it just happened.
That’s where I am right now.
It doesn’t matter that it’s been over eight months. It doesn’t matter that I’m trying to pull myself up and am largely functional in this world.
It’s still there. And I know it always will be.
It starts to unravel when, on a walk with Ruby, I see a bird who fell from the nest and is lost, disoriented, injured. I wonder if the mother is nearby or if anything can be done. I remember that you don’t want to put your scent on a bird in this situation as it could lead its mother to reject it. Then I can’t remember if that’s really truth or legend. But Ruby is there, vibrant, ready to move on, and I am her mother, so that is what we do. Then, a week later, it’s all undone when we pass the same spot and the bird is still there, but long since gone. And it takes all I have to make it home in one piece because I want to go back and pick him up, but I can’t.
It shortens my breath whenever I walk out of the orphanage I visit twice a week and know that all those children are still there, behind me, waiting for their parents to rehabilitate or for a new family to adopt them.
It knocks me down when I see a soldier standing on the metro platform and I think about his willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect the rest of us. Then I think about his mother, his father, the potential for loss, and I lose it.
All of this rises as I go about the day, seeming normal, acting “better,” even. Until one unpredictable day it all crests and takes me down with it. I don’t always have the tools when I break through to the surface. I’ve lost a few (heartbeats) or they no longer seem to work (rationality). They–I–am water-logged and kinda sorta drowning here. I guess that’s what can happen when you head back out into the water.
Do you realize that this is most of what I know of motherhood? This? This effort not to drown?
It’s my birthday tomorrow. Ryan’s is on Thursday, Valentine’s, a day made of hearts. In honor of it, I asked all of you to help me reach 100 hearts by Valentine’s Day. And you did! You surpassed 100 hearts, actually, and I love you for that.
This time last year I was pregnant with Lorenzo though only Ryan and I knew. We were at the beach here in Chile for our last birthdays as just the two of us, we thought. I pictured what it would be like having the little one there with us. By this next birthday, I wouldn’t have to picture it, I thought. The vision would be five months old and right there in the sand at our feet. So, I shouldn’t be surprised that these have been difficult days leading up to it in the alternate reality.
Like I said, it doesn’t go away.