A year ago, our lives were so different. So different from what it was the year before that, and so very different from what we maybe presumed it would have been. We became people we were not, people we had never been, people we are still only just discovering. Who is this person I've become? It is disorienting and traumatic, it fills me with this impossible hope and not a bit of fear.
I've got the attention span of a flea, haven't been able to read anything longer than a blog entry of newspaper article in months, sleep okay, but have not interest in things I used to have interest in. In fact, can't even remember what I had interest in. Sometimes the feelings of exhaustion are overwhelming. And I can't figure out if this is normal motherhood or post traumatic stress disorder. Maybe they are one and the same. Some professional guidance is in order here. I need some straightening out. I mention this to the mom of 2 MID kids and she starts to tear up. She and her husband will celebrate their 25 hard won years of marriage this September. And she reminds me to make time for Jose, for dates, for time together. Even when we can logistically, the effort feels strained and unreal.
Last summer, we would wake up, bleary eyed, stumble through the clean-up and speed down the hill to the NICU to nurse, hold, change diapers and read Journey to the West. Eating without tasting, sleeping without dreaming, hoping without breathing. We did not know what was wrong or why, only that there was this little tiny person in a clear plastic bassinet, waiting for us. In the end, it took the five longest weeks to diagnose, living in the netherworld of hospital chairbeds, hours of boredom and anxiety, waiting and longing and waiting and waiting. All of us waiting.
Now, I get to go home for lunch and get hit on the head with a spatula or cardboard papertowel holder. I'm halfway home. It's the last half that seems like a hat trick.
