Abandon Hope

Posted on 30 April 2010

I slide quietly into the bed beside my sleeping toddler, and lean in close to breathe in the smell of his hair. It’s the fresh air, sweaty boy smell of a good day, and the tears start sliding easily down my cheeks into the curve of his ear.

“I love days like this,” said the older boy earlier that day, the almost six year old kid whom I understand and know in ways that help me understand myself as a child, that help me forgive my parents for their failures.

I love these days also, but it’s more than the fading of the cold, the bright sun and a real spring that sends breezes to keep the summer humidity down to a rumor. It’s more than knowing we can go without furnace but don’t yet need to lug the heavy, powerful air conditioning units from the basement to their complicated window positions, propped with wood and sealed with haphazardly cut foam pieces.

I reach my hand out to touch my baby’s arm, his warmth and smallness a treasure in my hand. The girl is nearly grown now, so I know too well how they go away, how they fade from your arms and become their own people, with no room for you to be wrapped in chubby-armed hugs. Some days I don’t even see my daughter; some months go by without touching her.

My mouth waters with hunger for this, for this little head I can hold in my hand, still, for the small person from whose face I still have the power to erase the lines of sadness and fear.

My daughter’s heart is breaking as she works toward leaving behind a first love who will never match her industry, who will not be able to accompany her on the great destiny she sees laid before her, and I can’t do a thing to ease the sobs that wrack her body. I can’t hold her because she won’t have me; she must do this on her own without my judgement and influence, so she’ll know it’s her decision.

This little boy here, the bigger one, and even the grown woman who inhabits my baby girl’s body now, hold my heart in a purgatory of waiting, of knowing, finally, that we are all mortal. I imagine leaving them, I remember how I was so sure only a year ago that they would be so much better off without me. I would die without them, and so I planned my death, my last act for their benefit, I thought.

But now I hold on to them so my chest aches with the weight of it, my eyes with the pressure of seeing everything so I don’t forget. The pain is so much worse now, knowing I have to stay no matter what, knowing I have to watch them change and hate me and hurt and survive the damage of living a life.

The pain is so much worse, but oh! God, the beauty. The beauty of it is enough, for now.