Beyond the Edges

I've been reflecting hard on motherhood this month. In some ways, for the first time.

On Monday, we visited my grandfather at the cemetery. My kids are at an age when they're becoming curious about their family history and asking insightful questions, and while these moments are starting to happen more frequently, they’re still new enough to take me by surprise.

It’s strange that I’ve written so little about motherhood when it’s been the center of everything for so long, but it’s been difficult not only to confront those early years, but to imagine capturing them accurately.

During my pregnancy, I tried in a lot of ways to mentally prepare for triplets, but of course, the actual experience was something else. I’d always daydreamed about the quiet moments of new motherhood…singing slow lullabies in my grandmother’s rocking chair, playing on a quilt in the sun. Moments that couldn’t realistically exist when there are more infants than arms.

Those days were long and relentless. Even after months in the NICU, the boys were impossibly small, and in one’s case, incredibly fragile. They slept at different times, cried at different times, ate on a constant rotation: one right after the other.

I grew even more desperate once the pandemic hit and access to our remaining supports dwindled. My husband was gone during daylight hours and beyond, working to keep us afloat.

So after a time, out of necessity, I unmoored myself from that reality. I was a lifeless tangle on the floor, drastically underweight, hollow and contorted, while at the same time, I floated room to room, nursing, soothing, tending…never fully in either place but somehow always in both.

When I whispered cheerful things in their tiny ears, it was my voice they heard, but the words were from another source entirely. This would go on to shape a deeper devotion and sense of ancestral connection.

For better or worse, I can still push beyond those edges of myself. Except now I can start to consider that suspended place as one of potential rather than panic, a marker on the early path from mother to crone.