Dear S, It’s not news to you that I’ve been a mess this weekend. I keep trying to put a finger on how I feel, but keep coming up short. Motherhood has stretched me to the outer limits of all the emotions I’ve ever felt, sometimes in both directions at once. This weekend I’ve felt a new breed of exhaustion, I think. It’s the exhaustion that comes from having a week where I haven’t showered alone or eaten with two…
Dear Z, When we drove to our friends’ house, my nerves were so shot by the end that I could barely speak. I had spent the trip in the back of the car, sitting with our son in case he needed some soothing words on the way. Typically, you sit in the back with J. He cries here and there for a few minutes, but he is usually on a trajectory towards sleep as soon as his little eyes open…
Dear Z, Before our son had taken his first deep breath, the doctor returned to the end of your bed and began stitching you back together. Before the nurse handed him to me for the first time, you carried him for nine months, had your skin pierced with countless needles, burst your body open for his entrance into the world. And there I was by your side, body fully intact, meeting my child for the first time, and already miles…
Dear J, Until the moment I met you, I could not conceive of you existing, of occupying space separate from us. And the moment you arrived, when your head suddenly burst into the room, your face scrunched and ruddy, I lost my grasp for words. I tried calling your grandparents, to tell them to come up, but only tears and gasps were left to me. They listened, asked questions, but words did not come to me. It was enough of…