It's a rainy Sunday morning. Izzy is in bed next to me, making quiet baby babble cooing noises...too early... I know she's not going to fall back to sleep, although I try to will her to do it by closing my eyes and pretending to snore.
Doesn't work.
I knew it wouldn't.
I wonder-- (and on some mornings, seethe, but not this morning)
Why can't my husband just surprise me and get up with her.
The level of exhaustion that hits me at various points of the day, it's like a ton of bricks, suffocating, crippling... but not really.
Because it can be shoved back under, and forgotten, like a postcard under the bed, in a shoebox full of other random memorabilia that doesn't necessarily mean anything but means enough to not throw away... that stuff gathering dust.
Evidence of a different life & time.
The corners bending, the print fading, the colors yellowing.
I wonder if I'll ever feel normal again. I wonder if everyone feels this way. I wonder if this degree of exhaustion means that I'm old, or depressed, or worse, ungrateful.
Or maybe just human.
Izzy and I get out of bed and stumble into her room, where it's chilly, and her sound machine is still on. The whale. Whale-boy, as my husband and I call it.
It feels like we're at the bottom of the ocean, the waves echoing and crashing, the room dark, the rain softly hitting the window. I get her dressed and changed.
She plays on the floor, sometimes crawling over top of me, reaching around my neck for a hug, but almost as soon as she makes it into my lap, she is reaching back down for the floor.
I lie on the carpet and watch her, sometimes join her. I wonder how I could've wished to miss this. How I could've wished that my husband would do this, would have this, would take this, while I sleep it away.
This is our rainy Sunday morning.
Izzy is funny, she is sweet, she is the most adorable little creature that I could've ever dreamed up.
I wonder if this is just a haze of new mother lust.
When will I hit a plateau, and look back on these days like they were the good ones.
When will I hit that 'senior slide', and feel weathered, bored, blase, antsy.
Today though, I'm happy to squint through this still-new haze.. Which is equal parts joy - exhaustion - settling hormones (sometimes raging) - shifting identity (sometimes lost) - a full, bursting heart (sometimes lonely and afraid).
So many contradictions.
We're settled in this gray space.
The in-between.
I have to go to work this morning. Because I was out sick for a day, and a half.
I have to get off of this carpeted ocean floor, leave this baby's soft babbling, and float along, through this city. To work with people who don't give a sh*t about this ocean floor and this baby and this nest.
I will soon have to wake up my husband, who will be grouchy and puffy eyed and will shuffle into the kitchen, and demand to know what is in the trash that smells.
Izzy will yell for him, and do her fastest crawl towards him. She'll pull up on his legs and reach for him to pick her up. He'll pick her up and smile and the morning grump will melt. He'll hug her and kiss her and pull me in.
I'll try to forget my anger. I'll try to let it go, and see this moment for what it is. Then he'll make another grumpy comment.
I'll leave the house, into the rain, and tell myself not to cry. Hating this morning,
Hating this city.
Hating this rain.
I'll look for our postcard. The one where we have all of the time to spend together, where we can be sick at home when we need it, and travel towards the sun when the rain and the cold gets to be too much. Where we can sit in the sand and hear the waves crash and recede, and where we can know that everything will be right.
(But even in my gloom and doom mood, I know that everything is right.)
I'll sit in my car and hope that an extra hot Starbucks latte will fool me into feeling good about this day.
It just might.
Or maybe it'll be the sugar in the raw that collects at the bottom of the cup.
So I'll go.
And push all of this back underneath the bed. .
To gather dust, and be forgotten.
But not entirely.
To be left.
But not completely.
Maybe tomorrow I'll figure out how to fit all of these pieces together.
X
Cassie
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