I dabbed at the corners of his mouth with my towel. Or was that an old t-shirt? I looked down at my hand and wondered when was the last time I showered? Or better yet, brushed my teeth. I rubbed my tongue over my teeth and showed him all my teeth. He just stared back at me.
He had big brown eyes like his dad. My family’s eyes were more squinty while his were big and oval. His skin was a smooth, dark Hershey-bar color. Gram-Gram came over to visit after I returned from the hospital and the first thing she did was pull up his hat to see the tips of his ears.
“Looks like he’s goin’ ta be dark like ahr side of the family. Ah-least he got somethin’ from us.”
“Gram-Gram, nobody actually pays attention to that kind of stuff anymore,” I tried softly correcting her.
“Well, back in ma day, the colah of yo skin dictated ev’rythang. Ya’lls ahr new age par-nts nah.”
The way Gram-Gram’s eye shone when she held him and rocked him close, I swelled with pride. The fact that we could create something that would make even the likes of Gram-Gram proud was a big accomplishment. Well, that and the sixteen hours of labor.
He started to spit up. Thick, white liquid spewed from his mouth onto my shirt. It blended in with the other dried spit up from yesterday. When was the last time I changed my shirt?
I patted his back. If he could just somehow signal he was done or just stopped eating when I took my boob away, this would be so much easier on both of us. My doctor says he’s gaining weight, but Momma thinks he’s too small since we’re known to breed big babies. I feel like half of what he eats ends up running down my shirt, on my shoulder, on a pillow or down the front of him. I’m not sure what is actually making it inside of him but yet, his poop tells me that something is.
I look down at him again and his big eyes stare back and he makes a sound as if he is trying to talk.
“Now, you want to communicate? Where was all this talking five minutes ago when I wanted my boob back?” I find myself talking to him all day. Sometimes he looks as if he really understands. Yesterday, I started crying because I wasn’t sure why he was crying. My body started to shake and rattle due to the sobs I released. He actually quieted down the louder I got. Next thing I knew, he was sound asleep and I was trying to figure out how to blow my nose without waking him up.
I’ve had more of those moments than I care to admit. My girlfriend says it’s perfectly normal. I’m finding that hard to believe because I was never a crier before this. My husband thought I might be a psycho-killer because it’s like I lacked the empathy gene. We could watch Lion King and Bambi and not a tear would fall. I could attend a wedding and a funeral in the same weekend and not a single tear would form. Now, if the baby so much as looks at me for longer than two minutes, it’s waterworks. I cry those big ugly tears that only go away if you look at yourself in the mirror. I refuse to do that though. I don’t need to be reminded of what I look like these days. That makes me cry too.
I’m hoping that this is strictly hormonal and doesn’t stick around. It’s bad for my writing. I ghost-write horror fiction and need the creepy, crazy, sickening thoughts to come to mind. When you are writing about severing someone’s leg with a handsaw, the last thing you should be thinking about is which pajamas you’re going to put on the baby after his bathtime. Thankfully, I’m not working now because every thought is soft, precious and joyful.
I assume those rose-colored thoughts will dissipate just like my edges have. I enjoyed full, thick ponytails while I was pregnant. Now, I have to tie a silk scarf over my edges just to get the mail. Black women don’t get the luxury of wispy pieces of hair that won’t lay down. My stuff is unruly and has a mind of its own. Some of it balls up real tight and refuses to uncurl while other pieces stick straight out, requiring JAM, water, a brush, and prayer to lay them down.
I attempted to go get my hair braided to be somewhat presentable but when my normal braider saw the beehive I called hair and the disappearing act my edges were starring in, she shampooed, slapped some conditioner in my hair and sent me back home with a shower cap and a prayer.
I haven’t felt like myself in months. My boobs are the biggest and fullest they have ever been, yet I can’t keep a mouth off of them long enough to even enjoy it. My stomach is nothing like the snapback pictures I see from celebrities on social media. Do they have someone to come and suck the fat off of them? My stomach actually looks like something might be growing in it again. I almost stabbed my husband when he gave me that look. The thought of participating in an activity that could possibly create another one of these things makes me want to act out some of the murder scenes I write about.
Nobody told me about this part of motherhood. Nobody said that what I prayed so long a hard for would leave me feeling like I didn’t know who I was. Nobody mentioned that your body is not your own and taking a shower is a luxury. Or how you will literally leak in multiple places for a long period of time. It’s like all the women before me forgot to mention how things soften and expand beyond their normal structure.
I wish someone would have explained the true appreciation I would have for sleep and the importance of interacting with other adults outside of your home. I literally almost held a woman hostage at Starbucks last week because she said hi and complimented my tennis shoes.
I’m not sure who I have become. Everything looks and feels different, yet traces of me still surface from time to time. Last week, I gave another driver the finger for cutting me off and making me press too hard on my brakes while he was in the car seat sleeping. Friday, I ate Chik-Fil-A in the car while sitting in the driveway and then fell sleep in the car because I didn’t want to risk the possibility of him waking up to get him inside the house.
I am the same woman who enjoys watching football on Sundays and eating sushi on Fridays. I am still the woman who wears heels when I write because it keeps me focused and I can’t get up and walk every time I’m distracted. I am still the same person who bought her own home at age 32 and revamped her writing career at the age of 37.
That go-getter is still deep inside. I think. Perhaps, she has just been replaced with a softer, mushier version of herself.
He grabbed my finger, jarring me out of my thoughts. I looked down and a smile was looking back at me.
It’s all worth it. Every. Single. Bit of it.
