The first 1,000

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The first 1,000

I realize in just a short span of 9 days, our family will approach a milestone of sorts. This number can easily be considered arbitrary, one that would otherwise come and go without any recognition, perhaps it's only quality being that it is so tidy and divisible. I hesitate on letting my mind wander to this calculation in the first place. What good can come from this? It is a simple formula with only two variables, measuring one unit of distance since I last held my middle child. 1,000 days.

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Searching

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Searching

There is no pill. No physical therapy can strengthen my reserve. No infusion of chemicals can lessen how deeply I feel this. There is no relief to be found in any of my textbooks, medical literature, or online searches. Nothing can take the edge off. I wake up with it and begin the day feeling acute pain, but camouflage it. It is my job to alleviate my patients’ pain. I support them through their heartache while my own throbs.

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Not like the others

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Not like the others

You can see swimmers behind the people being interviewed—some in bikinis, some in tankinis, some in burkinis, not to mention swim trunks of all imaginable cuts and lengths—you get to understand their confusion. I wished that our world would become a bit more like that beach—that it would be ok to be as we are, that it would phase no one to see each other the way we are each comfortable being seen.

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