trying to remember it

I was so tired last night, I fell asleep right after I put Roger to bed, sprawled on my tummy on my unmade bed at 7:23pm. I woke up thirty minutes later when Dave got home from an extra long work day and wanted some time with me before his own inevitable collapse. We had leftover meatloaf and apple cake and watched The Office and told each other the funny little stories of our day apart. He was ready for sleep by 9pm and I was wide awake from my accidental nap. So I lay in my bed, my little family tucked in for the night, my mind running over life and motherhood and the cruelty of children growing up and the imperfect nature of memory. 

I was trying to relive my labor, trying to remember how it felt to be in the contractions and to give birth slowly through the night. And as I realized I have already forgotten all but a few moments of it, my heart started to ache. I want to remember it all, but if so much of it is already lost, how much else of my little boy will I eventually forget?

I can still sketch a memory: Roger's birth was not traumatic; I labored serenely, they told me after. I felt myself to be in a sort of labor-induced trance that carried me through most of it, and my amazing doula and nurses kept me relaxed through the difficult parts. My midwife encouraged me to vocalize when it was time to push, and I remember feeling like I was doing something incredible with each crying push through a contraction. I remember vaguely those infinitely lost moments of first beholding my tiny, huge 8lb 6oz baby. There is a moment I'll never forget when our eyes met, when his crying stopped as he listened to my voice. But so much else is a blur.

And as I lay there last night thinking about the memory and the gaps of memory, I realized how important it is that I write it down before it's lost forever. And how important it is to me, as a mother whose privilege of raising little ones lasts only a few short years, to record and lovingly keep safe each special memory from this precious time. What a gift it is to be here now. And how tragic if I let it slip away unaware, and only later realize how much I miss it and how lost it is.

And I write this to you, mamas, to remind you to slow down and take it all in. To write it down. To put down your phone or your camera and just live this. To not let slip these messy and beautiful moments that are so uniquely transient. 

You get to have another childhood, as a mother, because you have an up-close view of the world of your children. You can choose to be all here, feeling with them as they feel, learning from them because they still have that fresh faith and honest spirit we adults can leave behind in our cold and cynical brush with the harsh world.

And I write this mostly to myself, to remind myself to place my values rightly; not to be just busy, but to be just present, even if that means my to-do list is perpetually half-finished. 

...

And this isn't what I wanted it to be as I wrote it out in my heart as I finally drifted to sleep last night. Too hard to put exact words to the stirrings inside, especially when I leave them open for the world to hear. But if I don't write it or air it out, I feel like it would be lost. And maybe there's just one other soul who reads this and feels the same, and realizes she is not the only one.