To the friend who asked

photo by margaret durow

When Liam was last on your mind, what were you thinking?

Sulking over money. Sulking over the fact that none of my clothes fit and even if they did, they're all years old and I can't stand any of them. Sulking over the fact that my hair hangs like the ears of a basset hound. Sulking over my unruly eyebrows, and how aligning the planets to get them mowed is about as likely as Viggo Mortensen showing up at my house to administer Amish massage.

So I'm sulking.

And then the voice hisses Shame on you. How dare you dwell upon yourself when you couldn’t keep his brother safe.

I brush it away from my face like a spider’s web, inadvertently walked-through. I refuse to indulge it today. But it’s too late.

I feel so worn out with two kids. Imagine if it had have been three.

And then an angry mob straps me to a board and flays me to the bone, as they should.

A year ago, scared shitless, consumed with why couldn’t I have gotten pregnant with one baby like everyone else, instead of two? because I wasn’t ready to be that much of a mama, yet.

Is there such a thing as karmic twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome?

(Hence the flaying.)

TTTS just in time for me to change my mind, my heart. I was finally ready to be that mama for the two of them, my mirror-sons. But now he is gone and I am gutted, having wanted him.

***

A reprieve from the burden of enlightenment, of solemnity. A vacation from this unbidden intimacy with death. The ability to sit in front of So You Think You Can Dance with my brain on neutral, as it never is anymore: in slovenly peace.

Some days, I mourn the loss of obliviousness as I mourn the loss of my son.

Do you ever wish you could be ordinary again, just for a day? To be given reprieve to stress about credit cards and culinary disasters and the pain and gain of personal waxing?