it’s happening, it happened

perfect and madness really are the only words that come to mind when i attempt to articulate this love. i guess another word is overwhelmed. even now, i am pulling dust and little pieces of nothings from the floor out of your mouth. i am kissing your wet eyelashes and purple lids, you’re rubbing them and pulling my fingers to your mouth so you can gnaw and bite down on something hard enough like bone to ease the pain. erupting teeth. it is always all at once with you. all of it. the weight of your very tiny but ferocious body continues to weigh me down even though i hold my head as high as a statue, especially in public. there’s this badge of honor i wear…being a cool, stylish responsible mother. the mom that goes for walks with the portable speaker blaring too loud, thrifted chain belts clinking against the stroller, medicine (iced americanos) in travel mugs stuffing both diaper bag pockets. most days start in a coffee filled daze until we leave the apartment and whenever we finally get to wherever the hell we’re going you start to wiggle and wobble your way out of the contraption you travel in to and from. i know you don’t like being tamed…i don’t blame you but still beg you out loud to stay still for even just three seconds. you look at me with wonder and i know that you refuse to do such a thing and i remember you’re my daughter so i lift you out and hold you on my hip while i struggle to pay for a bag of beans at whatever local roaster we go to that day. i think about how much longer we have left with all the big and small luxuries that coffee provides, i feel sad that maybe if the bees do all go extinct soon that you won’t be able to really ever enjoy a good cup of coffee. maybe it’ll only ever be shitty coffee you enjoy and that makes me angry…i ponder on whether or not i should give you just a tiny sip of my iced americano and then shake my head saying “no” out loud…because i have very audible and visible conversations with myself these days and i can’t give my kid coffee. not until she’s 7. i know ty would strongly disagree with this sentiment, giving coffee to a 7 year old, but whatever it really is no worse than giving them candy. right? right!

my eyes feel heavy and it seems there’s never enough crack in the world to keep me awake, never enough anything lately to make me want to keep my eyes open when they want to be closed. i’m adjusting and it’s so inconsistently complex that sometimes i convince myself i’m doing everything all wrong but then i’m doing great, and then i’m doing it all wrong again. i’m not enough of this or that and my child hates me because i am just very boring so suddenly and i don’t have enough conversations with strangers on the sidewalk anymore like i used to. and in every puddle on any surface i see this reflection of some beautiful, aging thing that looks so familiar but i’ve forgotten her name. and it’s still me and it’s still all about me. and sitting, crawling, sobbing right next to me is an even more perfect version of myself named bliss that exists and is experiencing what it already means i think…to be woman. i remind her, but mostly myself, that she is witnessing the spiral that is me–unspiraling herself– unraveling and rolling out onto the road with a rotting wooden rolling pin. i tell myself that i am flattening so thin and spreading out more than i am physically able just for bliss to crawl all over me, her very own cosmic blanket shielding her hands and knees so she doesn’t get too many cuts and bruises along the way to becoming. i look at her and cannot believe my body pushed her out of me, i can’t believe that moment when i heard her first cry, yelping into the world for her mother, me. everything is right and everything is wrong here. i tell myself that being a mother in the 21st century is probably like being a mother in the 42nd century and also the 13th century… being a mother is the same and different across the endless span of time. being a mother is unpredictable but predictable every day. the guttural laughter and cries that introduce me to muscles all over my body i never knew existed until i can feel them…and then soon forget once these moments transform into the past. and again. and again. and tomorrow and the next day.

sometimes i think i take it all for granted and not even on purpose because it just is what my life is now. being a mother. i am so much more than mother: i am lover, daughter, friend, sister, artist, wordsmith…but all of these things just mean creator to me. the ultimate creation thus far has been the life i’ve created, the life i collaborated in making. but so much of me as a creator has seemed to fade to the background, still, so much of whoever i once was has taken shape differently and i’ve grown uncomfortable in that time that things have changed. uncomfortable to the point where instead of going, i decide to stay. inside of this perfect plexiglass box, safe with my bliss and my things that make my home feel like who i am supposed to be or used to be or still am. i think that’s a good thing though? i wouldn’t know but i’ve begun my research and i’m working it all out in my head and on dirty post-it notes with hair clinging to the sticky part, coffee stained legalpads. i share a studio with my partner and all of my shit is everywhere and i talk to nae each day about what i’m gonna do with it all and how pieces of cotton paper and doodles on folded up napkins are thrown around–draping all over the other things and gifts i still have to send out and brilliant ideas i conjure up that become afterthoughts the next day. whatever, i’m working through it and becoming is a miraculous place to be stuck in for just a little while. watching my tiny world grow up and expand, throwing cinnamon butter apples and kiwi all over the floor while i draw silly little shapes in colored pencil and crayola crayons on random pieces of paper is enough for me, for now. i can’t believe my own strength in making choices that aren’t easy but so fucking rewarding, so perfectly full of purpose. the essence of life is a beautiful thing to choose even if you can’t imagine who it is you’ll become. i am so proud of wherever we are ending up together. 

sometimes i feel brave enough on a random weekday and come back here to put it all somewhere, i think i’ll continue to be more honest about this lifelong journey i am on in becoming. it feels really good to validate my own feelings and tell you something maybe you don’t know

xoxo

k