Mar
18
She asked if I planned on having any more children and when I said no she mentioned the option of getting a tubal ligation during my C-section and I startled my own self by blurting NO. No, no, no. No I don’t plan on having more children, no I don’t want to rule out the possibility that I’ll change my mind.
But after he was born, my second child, I gave away my maternity clothes. I sent boxes across the country to pregnant friends, I filled bags for Goodwill. Hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars of tent-shaped items, even though it sort of broke my heart to do so. I remember carefully folding everything and stacking things in a trunk after my first pregnancy and the subsequent dusty nostalgic joy of unearthing them during my second. This time, there was nothing to save for.
Then I started giving away baby clothes. The tiny outfits that only fit a newborn, the blankets, the sleep sacks. With the exception of my very favorites which I plan to have made into a quilt someday, I gave it all away. More boxes. More bags. I gave away the swing, the Bumbo chair, the Bjorn carrier.
All that time, I thought, this is my last baby. There’s no need to hang on to this stuff. But in the very, very back of my mind, I thought: I can always buy more. If I need to. Because, I don’t know. Am I really never going to be pregnant ever again? Am I really never going to care for a brand-new baby, ever again? Is our family complete? Is everyone here?
(You are thinking, at this point, that now is when I tell you that I’m pregnant.)
I love my baby Dylan more than ever, and if anything my heart sustains new bruises every day at how quickly he’s moving away from babyhood. In actual walking steps: he’s running away from me. And oh, my Riley, my big kid. My babies are boys now, both of them, and those early, indescribable days of infanthood are over. Those days of pregnancy — of breathless anticipation and the marching miracle of growth — are over.
And for whatever reason, it’s only recently that I’ve truly believed, in every hallway of my heart, that I’m okay with that. I’m ready to say goodbye. To fold up those memories and place them, carefully, in the trunk of my soul. To carry them with me, but continue stepping forward. They will grow dusty, because that is the betrayal of our lives, but they will be there.
With me. With us. We are all here now.
Mar
17
Once I fell backwards from the branches of a willow tree, straight down onto my spine on a wooden picnic table in my best friend’s backyard. It knocked the breath from me in a painful whoof! and for a moment I couldn’t assess the damage, I couldn’t tell how badly I’d been hurt.
Almost every morning I scan through the obituaries. I look for people under a certain age. I look for birth dates close to mine.
Cancer.
Car accidents.
Heart attacks.
Passed away on. Her passions included. He will be missed by. Remembrances can be made to.
I used to love the stomach-dropping sensation of a plane’s takeoff, the moment all that metal and bulk is heaved into the sky and you can feel the immense strain and effort it takes. Now I clench my jaw and peer out the windows and think please and eventually oh, just get it over with. Go ahead and fall from the sky because you’re going to do it anyway, I’m tired of worrying about it. Just get it over with.
I don’t really mean it and the complicated mechanisms of flight don’t listen. They are busy. They have nothing to do with me, even when I’m convinced they have everything to do with me.
What will you remember, will you remember anything? A zipline across wild blueberries and tall green ferns in Michigan. The sound of surf and cold salt-spray on my lips in Oregon. My husband’s hand in mine the day we were married. My babies’ first cries, first smiles, first steps. Stop: rewind. Don’t go so fast.
The plane is going to fall and I don’t know when it will happen and I am scared it will be too soon. I am scared it will hurt. Will it be like falling backwards from a tall tree. Will my breath be knocked away.
Will, instead, it be slow and terrible. Will I become a burden.
Tick-tock, tick-tock. Shut up. Fuck you. I’m not listening. You’re the sly, rotted promise of hospital beds and oxygen masks and last-ditch medications and protruding bones and failing organs and the smell of shit, but I don’t believe in you. You’re not even real. You’re invisible. You can’t steal from me because I won’t let you. You can’t darken my life because I am turning on all the motherfucking lights one by one.
I look through the paper. (My name isn’t there.)
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