The Momoir Project

I am taking in the moment, enjoying the way my muscles sink into the mattress - they sing low in great relief - and the way rest, even impromptu rest of this kind, soothes my tired soul. I watch my son. He is curled on the mattress beside me, his head back to meet the cushion of the comforter and his knees tucked up close to him. He is smiling and giggling - the high rhythm of his laughter fills the otherwise quiet room as he exclaims and cries in cascading bleats of glee. He is laughing at my husband, who is crouched beside him on the bed, his own head bent inward to catch the look in my son’s eyes as he sends him cascading in happiness.

They are playing some kind of game, I am not sure what it is exactly - I am present but my mind tunes in and out - but it is sending my son into hysterics. We are a picture of family love but I feel the usual dull edges of my own melancholy.

Until something happens - the air changes in the room or the polarity of my emotion changes in my mind. Then, it happens. In an instant, I swing mentally from melancholy to euphoria as I lock into the soundscape of my son’s laughter and the landscape of my husband and son bent toward one another. This is peace. This is comfort. This is untethered happiness. I am suddenly swept under a tide of emotion that brings tears to my eyes and a strange sense of anger to my heart. Is this what others mothers feel all the time? That sweep of love that catches in your throat and makes your entire body ache with want of closeness. Is this what it might be like if I didn’t experience postpartum and pregnancy under a fog of depression and anxiety? Is this what motherhood is really about?

Caught inside the beauty of this moment, I strain to capture it in my mind, wishing I was a camera and could blink to capture both the image and feel of this rare bliss. Because in a blink, I will return to reality that sends me plummeting back to my usual thought train - what is for dinner? When will I have time to rest? What is my husband doing just now? I am back to melancholy, desperately trying to savour the remnants on my tongue of sweet euphoria. There was - in that fleeting moment – a gentle understanding that there is nothing quite like this in the world.

For me, parenthood is an illustration of drastic dichotomy - it can sweep me under as though my body were spinning under a transport trailer clipping along a bumpy highway with just my hands to separate me from life and death. Or it can send me floating on endless clouds. It can catch me lying curled on my side on a Sunday afternoon locked inside the good fortune of my bedroom and the sweet bliss of my son’s laughter churning in response to the careful love of my husband. Me taking in the scene with one hand on my belly, swelling with my daughter’s life, and one hand proverbially clutching my heart, aching with love.

Writing Start: Love