Two things can be true at once
On Motherhood: Only we can say what love is
It was my first time away from you. Three days. Two nights. Sprawling county lines. But we were still connected by the same mountain range. The same blue mountains we can see from our porch at home. The same blue mountains that, for once, weren’t blue. They were the red of October—rust, wine, crimson, terra cotta, rose, and pomegranate. The trees looked like a sun that is always setting, a fire that never goes out.
I booked a three-day meditation retreat that would require me to sit with myself. It was a test. Not so much for you, but for me—to see if I could handle being away from you. I didn’t want to simply pass the time, to distract myself from the empty void I’d have in my heart without you. I wanted to feel every ounce of longing. I needed to know that our love moves beyond our physical orbit around one another. I needed to know how to get up in the morning without your face, your laugh, and the sound of your feet spreading joy through the house. I needed to understand our separateness.
You see, sometimes, despite all the healing I’ve done and am still doing, I live from a place of childhood trauma, projecting all the things I once feared onto us—all the things I didn’t understand. When I was little, I never knew when my mother was coming home, or if she was coming home. I questioned her love for me because if she loved me then why did she always leave me? My self-worth was dwindling because I knew I wasn’t enough to keep her. I didn’t understand how to exist apart from her, and yet, I had no choice, no warning. I didn’t understand how to be loved in absence, in distance, or in separateness.
My beautiful boy, I don’t want that for you.
I want you to move through the world with the unshakeable confidence of someone who knows they are loved. I want you to rest in the security that you are loved even when I am not there. I want you to know that you are loved without hearing the words I love you, I love you, I love you a million times a day.
The days of the retreat unraveled with surprising ease. I thought I’d feel the tick of time—counting the hours, the sunsets, the night skies until I could hold you again. I thought I’d feel the pull of your joy and the tension of your need upon waking up in a bed that wasn’t mine. I thought I’d be weighed down by an unnatural stillness and my head would bloom with questions—were you getting enough water? Did you eat anything besides fruit? Did your dad sing the good morning song and show you the birds in the black walnut tree? Were you looking for me? Did you wonder if I was coming back? But what I found to be true was a different experience entirely.
The comforting thrum of my own heart that never broke rhythm, the untroubled mind, the steady, open hands—what I found at the center of all of it was trust. I didn’t fully know it before leaving, but what I uncovered was that I believed in us. I trusted our love. I didn’t need our separateness to tell us who we are or what was real because as it happens, there is no me without you.
I saw your face every time I meditated, but I also saw the ocean. The flickering blue. The oneness of you, of us, and the power that exists beyond us. Like the salted air of the coast, I felt you in my bones, on my skin, in my hair even when I couldn’t see you. There was a yearning, but also the kind of peace that only comes with knowing you are loved. Did you feel it, my darling? Could you rest in my love for you?
I will tell you that an anxious flutter entered my body on the last day. I didn’t wake up to it, but it slowly crept through me, starting with my stomach and moving through my shoulders and into the tips of my fingers. It wasn’t an anxiety built out of worry, but excitement. I couldn’t wait to see your smile. I thought you’d reach for me. But you didn’t.
When I opened the car door you just looked at me with your giant eyes. You looked older. Your hands were folded in front of you like you were waiting for something, waiting for me. No smile or even a look of recognition. You looked at me and then past me, through me.
“He doesn’t look happy,” I said to your dad.
“He’s not,” he said. “He cried the whole way here.”
But you weren’t crying now. You were silent, unmoving, like a statue. I’d never seen you so quiet, so still. Besides your wide blinking eyes, you didn’t move. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. That my heart didn’t ache in my chest. That, for a moment, my whole body didn’t fill with sadness, with worry, with what have I done?
I unbuckled you from the car seat and held you against me, my hand on the back of your head. You didn’t look around or ask to go down. You just let me hold you. Your head on my shoulder, your tiny hands gripping at my thrift-store coat, you held me, too. You sighed a release when I ran my palm over your hair and I felt the full weight of your body melt into mine like you were finally home. I kissed your forehead and your cheeks and your hands. You pointed to my necklace that says mama, then you pointed to my heart.
You were in here, I said, putting my hand on my chest. Didn’t you feel it, my darling?
I held your hand the whole way home, but you never smiled. I talked to you about truth, about how two things can be true at once—even opposing truths. We are one and we are separate. I love you and I love myself, and sometimes that can look different for both of us. My mother loved me and she didn’t know how to be there for me.
But our story is different and this is a truth that can stand on its own. Our story is ours, and only we can say how it turns out. Only we can say what love is. I looked for the slightest gleam of light in your eyes, the shimmer of understanding. You blinked and said nothing and we watched the mountains turn blue with the disappearing sun.
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