Motherhood: Coffee Shop Pilgrimage

3/12/23

The love of my life and the father of our daughter got it in his head that I should spend some time alone on a Sunday morning, out of the house (away from temptation), and away from the one who consumes me (consensually). There was a part of me that agreed. Another part that did not. For three days, I looked forward to the outing, imagining the coffee shop I would drive to (8 minutes away!) and what I would order. 

When the time came, I felt overwhelmed. Both daughter and husband were being that special kind of Sunday morning sweet and the prospect of making my ~alone time~ count for something spread out before me like weaving through a crowd to get to a bathroom. I stood at the door with my hand on the knob with tears running down my cheeks. 

“This doesn’t feel like I thought it would,” I say sadly. “This sucks.” 

I want to bail. I don’t want to bail. What do I want?

What do I actually want?

I feel, all at once, separate from and muddled with Mother. 

Being separate from my baby feels like betrayal to both of us. I retreat to the bathroom to wipe the tears from my face and I look at her in the mirror. She looks young today, like I remember her. I’ve been feeling so much older. Her hair is long, falling around her shoulders (rather than piled on top of her head). Her skin looks elastic and her eyes are open and rounded with uncertainty. I know you, I think. I have known you your entire life. 

“I think it’ll feel this way for a little while,” my partner says. “Probably the first several times.” 

In deciding whether to feel resentment or guilt, I am resolved to manage guilt, rather than hoist resentment onto my true loves. 

I have decided to walk to a coffee shop that is nearby, rather than drive so far away (8 minutes!). Baby steps, after all. And the walk will be calming. 

I take a breath, turn the knob, and I’m outside. I still don’t feel very good, so I start walking. I listen to a course that I’ve been working through. 

“You cannot, I repeat, cannot change, not even at all, let alone radically, from where you are. Where are you?... You are identified with a psychological script that is the result of conclusions drawn by a small child…” Red Hawk says. 

This assertion is annoying and also a relief. I have asked the question and been asked the question several times, “So what do I do about it?” I’m suffering! I’m hurting other people! How can I stop?

The question of how can I take responsiblity for something I can do nothing about - how can I say that I’m working if I am unable to change? The doing is the remembering. The “doing” is the surrender. The act of observing changes what is observed (and the observer, of which I am neither and both). 

A woman runs down the middle of the road, seemingly oblivious to the cars also moving down that road, like she is running a race with a police blockade, and she seems unapologetic about all of it. “What the fuck?” I mutter, curious and incredulous. 

The coffee shop is familiar, and that soothes me. The latte is pretty good, and I snag a table in the back corner, insulated (perfect). I write. It’s what I set out this morning to do. My partner sends me a photo of my daughter sleeping in her stroller as he takes her for a walk. I miss her. And I am grateful that she can be happy and calm without me there. The inner movements of parenthood appear contradictory to me and cause confusion most hours of most days. Leave me be! Come closer! I love her with all of my heart and soul, all of my skin and bones, every muscle fiber, every nerve ending and every synapse that fires, every current running through my tissue, every cell flowing through my blood. 

But (and) the time away is nice, ultimately. 

Six months have gone by quickly and in a way that makes it seem as though she has been here forever. Depending on how time actually works, perhaps she is. 

A week ago, I wrote the stretch of words below. I’ll end this with that. 

3/ 4/23

We walk down to the waterfall the same way we’ve walked down for the last thirty-something years - a pilgrimage, at this point. I know this path well, even as it shifts and changes over time - sinks deeper into the earth, water churning silt and sand onto the slippery stones and then peeling itself back over the upturned roots to slip thunderously away. 

This time is different (every time is a little different) because I have a baby strapped to my chest. I am not the same little girl who tumbled down the trail, half running, half falling, shouting and laughing until breathless. And yet I am. On the way back up, I’ll run into one of my old trail mates with his wife and two children. I won’t see him at first because I am focused on navigating an uphill march beneath a large hat, but he’ll get my attention anyway, smiling, and his familiar face - a face I’ve known since I could know anyone - will brighten my own like a reversal of time. “Hey! Hi!” I’ll gasp, and I’ll remember the way we were then, like siblings, howling through the forest. 

The journey down is crowded, perhaps rightly so, as it is a beautiful partly-cloudy day. The creek is swollen with rain and the blue sky shifts above us, revealing and concealing mossy stones and temporary waterfalls. 

When we get there, the main show is bursting from the stones above, filling the enclave with thunder. It masks all other sound, and if we sit in just the right spot, it is like being alone down there. 

We talk, we take photos, and then we sit, still. My gaze softens, catching every few moments on a flock of falling water drops, and the illusion is that time slows down for me and for these molecules hurtling toward the pool below. They strike the waiting water so hard that mist catapults into the air, catching currents of wind that occasionally brush my cheeks like fingertips. 

My daughter sleeps against me, and I can feel her breath rising and falling against my own. My skin hums with sound and wind and sunlight. Ecstacy is the best way to describe it. I am ripe with it, and the moment I realize how good it is, I try to cling to it - chasing after the moments as they pass, but the pure love I felt is gone as soon as I put words to it. I try to let that go, one breath at a time. Just be here. It will pass. And it does.

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