Coda.

by Alexa on August 22, 2008

If you could see me this week, live and in person, you might be confused. Why, she looks fine! you might think, Look at her, chewing on that baby’s foot! See her giggling at the television! Shouldn’t she be gliding, wraithlike, through the halls at night, wailing and clutching a tiny shroud?

Yes: I have trouble seeing twins. And double strollers. If I don’t hear from a pregnant woman for a few days I assume something terrible has happened. In fact, most things pregnancy-related make me vaguely jittery, and the sight of happy-looking pregnant women sometimes inspires a sentence to float, unbidden, from some sarcastic nook of my subconscious: How nice for you. Neither Scott nor I have eaten peanut butter since I was on bedrest, because we ate so much of it then. I remember the surreality of breakfast at a favorite restaurant, days after my discharge, fighting tears because I’d been there last pregnant with twins, and a month later even the waitresses were the same while I now had a tiny daughter in the hospital and a baby whose ashes we would be picking up later that day. I remember it seemed impossible that so much could change so quickly and leave so little impression on the rest of the world. Sometimes now I look at my daughter and see a reminder of what Ames should be. And the thought of the nights Simone spent alone in the NICU, when she cried around her ventilator tube and no one could hear her, and I wasn’t there—that thought can still reduce me to tears.

But in truth, I had to purposely set aside the time to write these last posts, because if I had waited for grief and guilt and memory to have enough of a presence in my daily life that they demanded to be written about…well, it would never have happened. In reality, these things come to me only in flashes. I see a little boy in a magazine and what if floats up, and then Simone squeals at the sight of her newly-discovered feet, and just like that, it’s gone.

If you could see me, I think you would be embarrassed, the way I smile at nothing these days, the way I mimic the sounds Simone shouts at me and shake my hair at her. I may be A Woman With A Troubled Past, but I don’t act the part. I think sometimes we try too hard to fit our lives into the shapes of the stories we know. I doubt we’ll ever really stop doing that, so I believe the best we can do is to make sure there are as many stories out there as possible. The women who have written honestly about motherhood—the good and the bad—helped me through moments of my pregnancy when I wondered if I’d be too anxious and overwhelmed to be a good mother. Whatever I felt, I knew that it would be ok, that others had felt it too, and had sent their reassuring lighthouse beams out into the murky waters for me. After I brought Simone home, I almost felt guilty posting about how much I adored motherhood (this is VERY ADVANCED GUILT—don’t try it at home), because I didn’t want someone who enjoyed it less to feel bad. Obviously, I was missing the point.
In elementary school we had a program called U R UNIQUE, a sort of cork-board precursor to a blog. Each week a new classmate would festoon the appointed corner of the room with artifacts of herself: pictures, favorite toys, trophies. They would give a presentation of everything Them, and the display would remain up for the rest of us to look at, to see all the little ways we were the same and different.
I like French fries dipped in blue cheese dressing. My house? Is FILTHY. Having a baby was the best thing that ever happened to my sex life. I’m a morning person. I wish I didn’t wish I were thinner. I drink my coffee black. My daughter was a twin. I’m sad about her brother sometimes, but not as much as you’d think.

Right now, I am happier than I have ever been. Ok, maybe there was a time in childhood, picking out school supplies for the new year, or chipping rocks out of the black-top with a crochet hook for my extensive collection. But with the possible exception of my wedding day, I have never been both this excited about the future and content in the present. I’ve been very lucky. I am full of plans, and I like it here, right where I am.

Coda.

I Wrote This.

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