I’m wandering around the centre of Santa Cruz this evening at a loss for what to do. Sometimes, in these first two years of motherhood, it has felt like alone time is my ultimate longing and then all of a sudden I have it and I don’t know what to do with it, don’t know how to be.
Ironically, I miss my husband and my daughter, the same ones who I’ve dreamed of having just a little bit of distance from when it feels like I’m needed nearly all the time. I feel like a traveler in a foreign country, loitering at cafes with no home to return to. I hear overplayed songs in English coming from a nearby speaker. “Stay with me, cause you’re all I need.”
It occurs to me that, while I have often grieved the loss of my single life - of solitude and adventure and late nights and prayer retreats — I don’t really miss it at all. I want the life that I have now, the very life that I longed for back then. (I have heard this sentiment before, in the form of sappy social media posts, and responded with a subtle eye roll but, right now, I feel it for myself.)
Lydia’s sleeping through the night now. For the first time in over two years, I can do the same. What a luxury. And, at the same time, I think I would miss them too much if I went away for a night. Who have I become? Who am I becoming?
I walk through the plaza, bustling with life on a Sunday night. Families with tiny babies on their first big outing, street vendors, shoe shiners, chess players, some kind of youth evangelism campaign with speakers blasting from the steps of the cathedral. (The Jesus I know would turn the volume down a few notches.) I feel eyes on my belly, which does anything but disappear in this skirt I’m wearing. Do they wonder where my husband is? Wonder why I’m alone? Or are those just my own wonderings?
I size up the heads of the smallest babies, shuddering at the thought of childbirth. (I wish this wasn’t the case, but it’s where I’m at.) I try to imagine what it will be like, remember what it was like, to have a baby.
I looked at my daughter this afternoon as she slept, and sized her up, too. The way she took up almost half the length of bed — how she’s grown! (How has she grown?)
How is it that so much of her growing has come from this life-connection to my body, that we are now preparing to say farewell to? (Thank you, body.) And thank you for what you are doing now, and have been doing for the past six months, caressing this tiny form, rocking it in the hammock of your pelvis, cushioning it from the light blows of a toddler wanting the comfort of your lap, wanting you more than ever.
Life. Far too beautiful and far too fragile. How is one to bear it?
...
I arrive home earlier than expected after getting the mass time wrong. Lydia is still awake (this was going to be perhaps her first night falling asleep without me). Andrew asks how my time was and I say “I missed you,” tears welling up in my eyes. “Mamá está llorando,” Lydia says. She comes near to me, reaches out and wets her finger on my cheek. “Donde te duele?” she asks. “Mi corazón,” I reply. “Yo quiero ver,” she says, as she starts lifting up my shirt.
Soon I am back in my usual position with her, lying on my side, in the dark, nursing her to sleep, waiting as her energetic toddler body gradually stills, letting my breathing deepen that hers might, too. Reminding myself how just an hour ago I was missing her so much. A couple unsuccessful attempts to break her latch and then, yes, she is asleep.
Later I lie in my own bed, unable to sleep. My finger traces around my belly button, finding the just-skin-deep spot where my baby is close enough to feel the contours of…an arm? Somehow grateful for diastasis recti, that this natural spreading of my abs might not be so much a problem to be rehabbed down the line but a soft place, a window in flesh, to reach out and touch my child.
Eventually I settle, too, and all three — four — of us are asleep under a full September moon.
