From September
On Motherhood: I track time by the flowers, by which have bloomed and which have faded.
I track time by the flowers, by which have bloomed and which have faded. By the way the sedums that line the path to my porch have gone from blush to mauve. The way the butterfly bush is now empty and still. The way the echinacea flowers have all lost their color. The way the wind blows the leaves around in the black walnut tree outside my bedroom window.
They say it’s the end of summer.
I feel as if I missed it entirely. I missed the rivers and the late sunsets. The mountains and the picnics. The road trips and the wine. The dinners on the patios and the late-night walks in the city. I missed it all.
I was holed up indoors nurturing a tiny being. Introducing him to my body and my voice. My touch and my heartbeat from the outside. Waking in the dark hours and sleeping through the gold early morning light, my soft and broken body curved around his little magic soul.
I was recovering from creating a human and fighting like hell to bring him into this world. To keep him here. To show him that not everything in life would be this hard. Where there is pain there is beauty. Where there is sorrow there is joy. To show him that no matter how much I hurt or how exhausted I am, I will always show up for him.
It’s September and I’m still healing.
It’s September and the leaves are already beginning to change.
It’s September and I’m still so damn tired.
But I told him we’re not going to miss one second of fall. We’re going to hike the Blue Ridge Mountains and go to the farmer’s market. We’re going to count the stars and go to the ocean. We’re going to pick apples and feel the sun on our skin. We’re going to make memories with every day of sunshine we have left. Until the trees are bare and the Carolina sky goes grey, we’re going to play.