Laws of Motion

I cannot stop crying. The day we left the hospital, the nurse reminded us that our baby would never be like this again. I turned my head to the side as the tears welled up, my lower lip pulled at the corners by two invisible anchors. I wept again right in the middle of the lobby of the hospital; I was holding the baby in her car seat carrier, waiting for Lovey Loverpants to pull the car around to go home. People passed me and could see, Classic Case: Hormotional Post-Partum Woman. "Good luck with that," they seemed to say. I've cried breastfeeding several times. I fell to pieces at the kitchen table, my face wrinkled like a Sharpee, and part of me felt better to cry, and part of me felt worse.

My tears are happy tears, but they are heavy tears. And I don't mean to be melodramatic, but I don't think you can underestimate the emotional residue left from having a living human soul lifted out of you, to live on the outside of you forever and ever amen.

You can call this post-partum depression, or hormones in overdrive. I call this Experiencing The Laws of Motion. Objects in motion continue in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.

There are moments in my life when I have been profoundly aware: I will never get this back. This was doubling over after dinner with TP while Pops made up stories about the boys in our class, all this against the lulling hum of our dishwasher. This was videotaping my friends riding The Rug of Death across Sopia's foyer. This was sprawling out on a futon in Astoria with four of my favorite people singing Monster Ballads at the top of our lungs at 4a.m. and then making everyone call off work due to illness. Sometimes I miss these moments like a boyfriend that marched off to war and never came back. Sometimes I miss them all at once so that my heart becomes so heavy it nearly sinks out of place. Objects in motion continue in motion...

With each microscopic breath that she breathes, Baby Girl will orbit farther from me if I do not work with all of my might to draw her heart back to mine, back to where it once beat right next to mine inside of me.

I will never get this back. This is why I cry. I am already missing what has not yet passed. At least I am glad I am not alone.