My left arm has been numb at least twice today. Why?
What violence occurred? I was
holding my baby all day long. Couldn’t
put her down. I would get her settled
and put her down and moments later she would be squalling, squirming, her
little fists windmilling and punching the air.
At one moment I was staring off in the distance, my left
hand lying limp beneath the fifteen pound weight of her, and thinking about my
other daughter. When she was little she
really only cried when something was wrong.
She would squall and then burp. Oh,
her belly hurt. She would squall and I
would feed her. Oh, she was hungry. She
would squall and then fall asleep. Oh,
she was tired. I stared at the door to
her room, behind which she slept, and thought that her behavior had gotten so
confusing now. One plus one no longer
always equals two. In a true testament
to sleep deprivation I never connected these thoughts to the child that lay
heavy in my arms.
The little one cried during dinner. I sighed, a thick panicky sigh, and began to
throw down my dinner (a two handed dinner of messy bean tacos). Scott said,
“Don’t worry, she’s fine, just eat.” I slammed the flat fingers of both hands into
the table,
“It doesn’t affect you the way that it affects me!” I
bark. He gets up and holds her so I can
eat and then I take over, caring for her in ways that only a mother can.
There it is, this biological connection. There we are, each one of us, pockmarked in
the middle of the belly, with a healed hole that once connected to us a
woman. And that woman failed. And that woman succeeded. As soon as I got pregnant I began to wonder
about myself in this role. How will I fail? How will I succeed? What little love gestures will my children
internalize that will hit them just perfectly?
A nickname that I give them? A way
I touch them? A saying that I say? And what things will I do that will hurt
them? A hug I don’t give? A word said wrong or quick in anger?
This entire afternoon I got lost in my daughter’s
wails. Forgetting that baby’s are
usually simple. Although this simplicity
is not easy. My connection to her
clouded rational thought. I struggled to
hold her in new comforting positions with my dead arms. At four I finally nursed her, she finally
took it, she passed out and did not wake up when I put her down. When Scott got home I was hunched over the
computer, he asked me how my day was, upon seeing the quiver of my lips he
handed me the keys and asked if I needed to leave. I went for a run.
When I came up the stairs after my run Carys, who had been
asleep, was squirming and wide awake.
Scott looked at me,
“She’s spit up on me about three times, thick mucusy stuff,”
I nodded gravely,
“I have barf in my hair,” what can I say? It was a rough afternoon.
So there it was. That
simple. She had belly trouble. Thank God for fathers. Men who can see through our fog of connection
to help. Maybe I failed, sometimes I think that we don't remember our infancy is a gift from God. Maybe I will do better tomorrow.
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