Quiet
September 18th, 2004
stopped crying. This feeling of being consumed, like half of me is always
waiting, breathlessly, for what is needed. Socializing, others offer, ask, to
hold him and I happily hand him over, but I listen, always, for those little
cues that I am needed again, even while trying to engage in small talk, which
has never come easily. I hide behind him, and know that once I can leave him
comfortably for a few hours I will have to force myself to practice the social
thing again.
I’ve been dipping in and
out of this stage in my life for nearly eight years now. Of the last nine I
have spent three pregnant and four breastfeeding, and everything gets so
altered, from the texture of my hair to my fingernails resistance to breakage to
how I talk to people and what they see when they see me. But I think I am not
consumed because it never leaves my awareness that it is a stage, transitory,
and not an identity. And I look at younger women who have freedoms of not having
had children yet and are beautiful in ways that they are not even aware of and
what I feel is not envy exactly, but a wondering if I appreciated that stage
when I was there. And I look at women who have gotten through this all
successfully and reclaimed their lives and wonder if that will ever be me. And
yet, I wonder at Thornton Wilder’s choosing in _Our_Town_ for Emily, given a day
in her life to live over to have picked high school and dating
