A love that is here

On Motherhood: A love that is known. The kind of knowing that exists in the marrow.

Five months of giving all of myself to you and yet somehow there’s still an abundance left.

The more I give to you, the more I have — the more I have to give back to myself.

Christmas was coming up but we didn’t care. We didn’t have any gifts under the tree. It was just you and me in the old living room where the wood floors creaked and shifted under our little feet. Where the footsteps sounded hollow and we could see through the cracks in the planks into your dad’s recording studio. We listened to him play the piano and I watched your eyes smile in the glow of the thrift store lamp as the notes came up to kiss our cheeks.

In those somewhat early days — not the first days, but the ones that came after — I felt like I was disappearing. Falling beneath your layers of needs. Someone was taking Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to my entire being. But I followed your rhythms and relinquished control. I let my expectations, my ideals, my structure fall away.

I made space. I released the grasp. I listened.

And now here we are on the sage green couch, free and unfettered, molded into one another’s experience. We nourished each other. We healed the parts that ached and yearned and needed.

In the dark window-lined living room — windows with the old glass that makes the world outside always look like you’ve just woken up — I’ve been able to truly see myself for the first time.

A discovery of what has been there all along and of what has grown. Bloomed from the tiny seeds that you planted the moment you joined me Earthside.

Because of you, I have never loved myself more.

Not love in a self-compassion sort of way or in the realm of confidence, but love in the way that is beyond the self.

Love in a way that cannot be explained, but only felt.

A love that is known. The kind of knowing that exists in the marrow.

A love that is here.