I fell in love.
I never liked this feeling: butterflies in the stomach and narcotic euphoria. Not that I’m a cold-minded person, but I like to stay in control, and when something takes over me – I don’t. I love when I’m drawn in (or rather uplifted) intellectually, when rose petals fall onto my brain – that’s romance.
My infatuation has never fallen on fertile soil, and I kept scattering myself into emptiness. I never received the kind of love I needed. I wasn’t expecting gratitude or anything like that, no – but after fleeing with drained resources and yet another broken heart, I always thought I deserved it. With a child it’s so simple: there is no space for gratitude, only the purity of connection. A child doesn’t know they are supposed to be grateful; they simply accept what’s given as a given. A child sleeps sprawled out on me in their funny awkward pose, it’s uncomfortable for me – well, not always, but sometimes something goes numb, my tailbone hurts or whatever – but the child is warm, smacking their lips, throwing a leg across my face, and for some reason it’s funny and good, and very much like being in love. I can’t move that little one aside without regret, I don’t want to go anywhere, I look at the tiny fuzz on the ear, think about future methods of trimming small claws. For the child it’s only natural to be here and behave like royalty, taking what’s theirs – and for the first time, infatuation feels logical and right.
The child pokes around in my mouth, pulls my hair, pinches, hits, and of course nurses, I am their territory. The child laughs with a full mouth, playfully bites, sometimes painfully. The child needs to be carried, the child needs to go. Mama has to obey. Basically, switch on all possible ears, because a mother is so much – she envelops the universe.
This love isn’t empty; the child endlessly teaches: to communicate without words, to be patient, to be here and now, to manage countless things, to fight for the right to be yourself, to reinvent yourself, even to truly survive. The child reminds me of forgotten things: to stretch in the morning, to grip the ground with my toes (like in yoga), to be flexible, quick, fearless, inventive, to marvel, to be curious, to observe. A child is living proof that many things mean nothing, that they pale in the light of things weightier, and they remind, clarify, underline which ones truly matter. The child clears the mind and makes you move mountains. If you are a mother – your relationship with the world will never again be what it once was: though sometimes you fear for that child, there are no other fears left – such a new freedom!
The child is willful enough to teach the mother to be a wise ruler, and simply wise, giving her the chance to invest tenderness into making the world just a little better. A child is inherently grateful, fertile soil into which we have the chance to plant chosen seeds, the best of what we have.
I remember how a year ago this love began in the delivery room, when the Alien and I – physically apart for the first time – felt as one, on all levels. Trembling, aching, and tender, co-feeling, co-existing, co-living. Pure, pure, pure. Before, I never liked falling in love, because purity was missing. Now – it’s my natural state.
