In Another World

I had a miscarriage, not recently in time (5 years, 1 month and 25 days ago), but sometimes it feels recent in my heart.  Some who have experience greater tragedy, implore me with words, and looks and sighs to move past it (or get over it).  But I don’t want to.

On particularly dark days, I think about what that pregnancy would have been like.  Wonder what that little blob of cells would have developed into (girl, boy?).  How would our lives be the same and different?  In another world, I sort of see our lives with that baby - in another realm that version of my family exists with equal amounts of joy and sorrow - be it different.

That moment set my life on THIS course.  Sent me to meet a therapist to deal with my depression and anxiety.  Sent me to seek a career that nurtured my soul rather than my wallet.  Sent me to seek epiphany, find acceptance of myself, and feel.  Regretfully, I think it pushed me to build a Fort Knox shell around my heart and perhaps to read The Twilight Series of books.

That experience brought more growth and another childless 18 months.  This life is beautiful and heartbreaking, clear and confusing, light and dark.  Longing for something that didn’t come to fruition doesn’t mean I am ungrateful for what I have.  Just the opposite, having felt the darkest shades of my heart makes the colorful ones so vivid (feeling).

#Blessed

One thing I wish someone would have told me as a new mom is that NO ONE has it together all the time.

A friend of mine uses #blessed ironically to describe the moments that are less than picturesque; the moments with so much realness you don't want to share them with your childless friends for fear the human race would not continue.

But here we are in the age of social media, everyone’s happy smiling faces, family photos, trips to Disneyland, first days of school all marked #blessed.  Its easy to feel like the only parent who has no idea what they are doing, especially if you don’t subscribe to a specific parenting philosophy.  Just know with every beautiful moment posted, there are 9 other moments of crazy chaos (think bull riding, blindfolded, balancing an egg on your head).

So why not share the realness?  The diaper explosions, the breakfast tantrums, the snotty noses…if that’s the real deal then why don’t we see more of it?  My answer is because those moments are so fleeting, even if they are frequent.  If my parent-heart is a pond, then the tough moments are tiny little mist grazing the still surface, while the smiles and milestones are cannonballs - you can feel the waves and ripples of the good stuff much stronger and for far longer.

Self reflecting I can say on a good day I know what I am doing 50% of the time and half of that 50% I am sleeping.  In spite of craziness, would I say I am #blessed? ABSOLUTELY!

The Most Painful Gift

As a child time seemed to pass by so slowly, but with each year passed, time seemed to build on its own momentum and now as an adult I can’t seem to get a grip on it.  Time is an object rolling down a never ending hill that never reaches a terminal velocity.  I used to think it was such a cliched exchange to talk about how quickly time has flown by, like one second to you is longer than one second to me.  Though the concept is finite, the emotional aspects of time are completely fluctuant.

However, the beauty and pain of time was never so apparent than after I became a mom.  With the birth of my son, came a literal human measuring stick for the passage of time.  “The days are long, but the years are short,” truer words have never been spoken.  As a new mom, I would count the minutes down waiting for my husband to get home, a second set of hands, a chance to use the bathroom by myself, maybe even the possibility of a nap.  Each day, week, month and year would pass and we would faun over all the baby/toddler milestones, crawling, walking, and talking.  During those moments of course, we are so grateful for our gift of time, watching this little baby blob turn into a little guy with all sorts of sweet thoughts about the world.

But here’s the thing, we can’t possibly (and really shouldn’t) remember every second of every day of every week, so it feels like we all fell asleep one night and my son aged 4 years by the next morning.  And now next week, he is going to start public elementary school and I am feeling so resentful of time.  He is going to step on that little campus, and that will signal a new part of his life where he will gradually need me less and less - it just feels so unfair.

Me: You’re getting so big, stop growing.

Son: No I want to grow.

Me: I know I want  you to grow too.  

Heart: No you don’t!

Brain: Yes you do.

Son: Can I have a granola bar?

I think to myself at least once a day, “how did we get here, how are we already here, at this part?”  And for my son, he is thinking, “tomorrow feels like forever from now.”  His time is still slowly rolling down the hill being moved by breeze and wind, while mine feels like it can’t go any faster (and I am told it can and does).  And yet, I can’t wait to see what time has in store for all us.