Four years ago this month, I had a baby. In the run-up to William’s arrival, people told me how wonderful it is to have a baby in the spring. I never understood this. Wouldn’t any time be a wonderful time to have a baby when you desperately want one?
I think what they meant was that having a baby in the spring means you can take them outside without layers of clothing, without a coat you have to take on and off endlessly with every buckling and unbuckling of the car seat, without hats or socks or shoes that constantly fall off in a mission to make you lose them all and your sanity. They meant that, instead of all of that, I could bring the baby to the park and let him lay under the trees while I enjoyed the sunshine in some sort of carefree fantasy of new motherhood.
What I don’t think they meant is what I actually experienced — my son’s birth, my birth as a mother and nature’s yearly rebirth colliding.
I spent weeks that spring and early summer blinking in the newly bright sun, marveling at just how precious and precarious all of this is. Do y’all see these flowers?! These trees?! This whole wide world?! I felt simultaneously fragile, strong, vulnerable and brave. I had created a life where no life existed before, and was suddenly aware that every person I met on the street had started life in this same small, helpless, needy, innocent, completely beautiful way.
I didn’t feel quite this way with the birth of my second child, and I chalked it up to the fact that I was not reshaping my entire identity that time around, but I was a bit disappointed — as brutal as it is to feel cracked wide open, there is also a beauty to it that I was hoping to experience again.
But now, here I am, doing just that. There is no new baby this spring, but as I emerge from a year of staying home, that feeling is the same. I’m spending yet another spring completely in awe of nature’s renewal, almost mournful of the moment when blooms have faded into leaves, but also at peace with its cyclical nature. I’m walking around in the too bright sun thinking once again, do y’all see this?! We are here, and we were once all babies, and in many ways we are still the same: we are helpless but determined, tiny but powerful.
Once again, the core of me feels like the fresh, pink skin that emerges as a skinned knee heals -- of myself, but not yet wholly myself, tender to the touch and carrying the reminder of all that has happened alongside the promise of something new.
By the end of this week, I will have received my second Covid-19 vaccination.
Of course, I won’t be fully vaccinated for another two weeks. Of course, it won’t be over for my family as a whole; with two young children, we will be lucky if our household is vaccinated by the end of the year. And of course, we’re still a long way globally from whatever the end will be. So really, it’s a moment that’s symbolic more than anything.
But still, it’s something. A step closer to a potential end.
I have been thinking about this end, the after, for months now. Will I be flooded with relief the moment the shot is injected into my arm? Or will I feel nothing at all aside from the jab of the needle? What will it feel like to throw off the low, ever-present hum of anxiety that has defined our lives for the last year? Will I even be able to? Will it happen all at once, like the anxiety arrived, or slowly, slowly in bits and pieces and only by pushing myself outside of what feels comfortable? What will it feel like to meet freely with friends again? To not second guess the necessity of an errand? To not constantly judge a six foot distance as I wait in a checkout line at Target? To not hold my breath as children crush together on a playground? To sit inside a restaurant? To one day take off a mask and then never put one on again?
I have tried to answer these questions for myself for weeks and months, and yet now I sit, hours away from this moment, still wondering.
What will the after be?
What I want it to be is this: Lying outside on a warm summer’s day, the sun warming your arms, a gentle breeze flowing through the tree above you, just enough to create the pleasing rustle of leaves. Sipping a cup of coffee in bed, your body still immersed in the drowsy warmth of sleep, your mind not yet buzzing with your list of things to get done but instead focused on the quiet possibility of the day ahead of you. Sitting on a front porch late into the night with an ice cold drink and a good friend, talking about things you really care about and knowing there’s nowhere else you’d rather be, nothing else you’d rather be doing and no one else you’d rather be with. Meeting a few other families at a playground, sharing a box of donuts, watching your children smile as they go down a slide, their laughs and bodies tangling with each other. Accepting the stick, the leaf, the petal, the berry your child hands to you, holding it gently in your hands, treating it as the precious gift it is.
Calm. Easy. Happy. Quiet. Small. Present. Connected.
For months now, I have taken note of moments that feel this way. More of this, please, I have been saying in my mind.
There was the time a woman rushed out of her home, telling the person she was on the phone with to wait, while she asked me if she could show my sons the hummingbird nest and babies she had found in a nearby rhododendron — she just wanted to share her delight with someone, anyone, and she chose us. There was the thoughtfulness that was shown to me as I navigated two children and a full Ikea cart — the offers to cut in line as the kids got restless, the extra set of hands from a stranger as I loaded my purchases into the car. There was the swarm of bees, and a man wanting to talk about it with me and my kids as we walked our dog — how it had already happened this year, but never before; how he had found beekeepers to remove them safely; how his kids are past the age of showing interest in something so simple, and how nice it was that my kids weren’t. There was the impromptu concert we walked past, a small band playing their instruments outside on a beautiful evening and their neighbors arriving, carrying lawn chairs, filling up the nearby yards in small clumps spaced six feet apart. There was the new puppy down the street, and her owner chatting with us about her past dogs and past homes as we laughed at the puppy’s floppy run and permanently wagging tail. There was the evening we walked home from the park, the scent of hyacinths in the air, the neighborhood blanketed in quiet pierced only by my son’s eager observations and, when we turned the corner, a burst of laughter from teenagers sitting in a backyard lit by paper lanterns. There is this welling of protectiveness within me, this burst of recognition at how fragile we all are, how much we need each other, how we have tried our best to adapt and survive, as I watch friends sit six feet apart, masked, at the park.
There are so many small things that have happened that have left me wondering: Might we come through this all feeling some sort of the same desire? To connect with others. To notice and delight in small things. To offer a helping hand. To appreciate it all.
What will the after be?
More of this, more of this, more of this, I repeat.