When I returned home to a toddler sucking on frozen tubes of Stonyfield yogurt in flannel Buzz Lightyear jammies and two bored children in mismatched clothes, I settled in for a long stretch at home, going over to-do lists and guest lists and emails and bills.
Then I read the latest in my Google Reader, and as she often does, Heather Spohr moved me with a post about missing her little daughter Madeline and anticipating the birth of her second child early next year.
There is something about her post that just touched me through that portal that is the common bond of motherhood. I don't pretend to know anything about what she has been through -- her premature delivery with Maddie or the weeks in the NICU with her, the health battles they fought in Maddie's life, or Maddie's sudden, unexpected passing last April. Reading her blog, for me, is searing in its raw pain and vulnerability. I want to read it because it makes me feel; what it makes me feel isn't necessarily happy, but it makes me happy that people and relationships and feelings can be so strong.
I look at those pictures of Heather's belly, burgeoning and taut and teeming with life. The freckles on her arms look so human, so vulnerable. Her hands are the ones that held her baby and that held her baby's hands and that laid her baby to rest. Her belly, her arms, her hands -- they just all somehow tie together and remind me how every single woman who bears or loves a child does so with her whole being, her whole body. It changes who we are, what we look like, how we speak, how we touch. So much life, love, happiness, sadness, tears, hurt, and finally hope have come out of Heather's body, and here she is, on the brink of doing it again.
Maddie's whole life came and left through the passages of her mother's body, and somehow, Heather's body is now a vessel by which Maddie will live on, through her thoughts and her memories and her fingers and her words.
I don't know you, Heather, but I know you. You have no idea how hard I am hoping and anticipating the birth of your second daughter, not as a way of filling the void that Maddie left, but as a way of continuing your story, Maddie's story, the story of your lives.
2 comments:
Reading your exquisite post, I was reminded of Ann Hood's Modern Love piece in the New York Times. Hood's daughter died suddenly and she, her husband, and her son decide to adopt another child. In it, she writes:
"What I do know is this: there is no safe route through parenthood, or through life. When we offer our heart to others, we do not know what will happen to it. It may break. It may grow. It may take us places we never imagined.
But isn’t that the risk of love? To be willing to stand on the stern on a beautiful summer day and, not knowing the outcome, to leap?"
And what parent does not know the risk that comes with every scraped knee, every heartbreak? Maybe it's the willingness to assume that risk that underlies the universality of motherhood.
oh WOW. I am really touched by this post! I don't even know what to say, other than thank you so much. Man. I feel like a goob, but please know I am honored that you wrote so wonderfully about me and my daughters. Thank you.
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