"Getting older's not been on my plans"

  Someone asked me last week if my life has changed being a mother. I responded rather flippantly with something like, "I understand more sleepless nights and perhaps shorter patience." But, this week has caused me to look a bit more introspective.   This Holy week was too reminiscent of the last, at least of me not being at Mass celebrating the Triduum, the 3 most holy days of our liturgical calendar. But, last year, Covid was beginning to take over the world, and unbeknownst to anyone but me, at least what I thought to be true, I was pregnant.    Here we are, a year later, baby Owen almost 4 months old and Covid finally getting more under control thanks to those of us who take things seriously.    But, what has changed since I became a mother? I understand a little more now Abraham's sorrow and fear when he led Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him. I understand a little more now the pure happiness that showed on the face of the prodigal son's father. I ...

  Me: "So, we can't use condoms."   Bee: "Okay."   Me: "And, I don't do birth control."   Bee: "Ookaayy..."   Me: "So, I would imagine that me being so regular in my cycle that we are going to get pregnant pretty quickly."   Bee: "Gotcha..."   Me: "Oh, and no sex until we are married."   Almost 5 and a half years ago, a conversation very similar to this took place between me and white boy. I felt it important to lay down everything I wanted, needed, and expected in a relationship due to the fact that I was done chasing and giving in to men. I figured if he stuck around then there was something worth pursuing.    With conversations like this, he never flinched. Not once. I think he might have been skeptical at times, perhaps to see if I would relinquish my, "You have to come to Mass with me. There is no choice, and our children will be raised Catholic," harsh expectations. But once I realized he wasn...

   It fell off sometime around the middle or maybe it was the end of week 2...the shriveled up remnant of the tie between my unborn child and me. I kind of always thought it would be a momentous event: "Call the papers! Call the masses! Owen's umbilical cord fell off." But, it was a quiet moment. Sometime around 230 in the morning. It was just me, and I thought, "Huh, so this is how it happens." I open his onesie to change him and there it sits on his belly...no longer attached. I saved it in a little box so white boy could see it in the morning.    I was told by more than several people that once Owen was born it would all be worth it. That all the pain all the madness that came with labor and birth would all float away when he was placed on my chest. Well, I didn't get that. I didn't get the first moments to hold him to see if I could feel the ebb of pain and turmoil as they left my body. It wasn't for least 45 minutes, as I laid there to get stitc...

   Name (s): Alysse, Aly, babe, beautiful, and mommy (!!!)    State of mind: Clusterf***   Hair: I would say messy bun, but not in the cute way...more in the "Holy hell what happened to you" way   Fashion: compression knee high socks, shorts, depends diapers with overnight maxi pad insert, nursing tank top, and a tired bland expression.   Reality: new mother   First of all, I have to mention that when the nurse was discharging me and explaining what my mental state might be postpartum, I laughed. I began to regret it 4 miles from home as I start crying and couldn't stop. "You might experience the need to cry one moment and not the next." Welp, this was full on tears. Waterworks. The let down!    It wasn't pain either, at least not in the sense of physical pain. Sure, that was there, but this was, "I need my mommy and I need her now," kind of pain. And, when we pulled up into the drive, I saw her come out on the porch with her camera, I f...

   "I c-c-c-can't stop shaking." "Oh, that is normal," he said as he looked down at me before he peered back over the blue medical sheet in front of my face. I couldn't. I just couldn't stop the incessant shaking. The moment of welcoming my son had played out in my head everyday for the last 10 months, and I promise, this was NOT it.   We arrived 30 hours prior, and my utopistic idea of induction had not come true.    "There are only a few reasons we would revert to a cesarean section... 1. He is under stress. 2. I am under stress. 3. He isn't progressing after some time, but chances are we won't get there."    So, after 22 hours of quite intense labor, I found myself being prepped for a c-section. I'll be the first to admit, my words of, "We will do what we have to do to have a healthy baby," seemed so far gone now. I wasn't sure emotionally how I had gotten this far, or even how I would get further.   "We are go...

   I used to write. Often. And when I thought of myself being a great writer, the first thing that came to mind was poetry. I secretly have always considered myself a poet above all else. The lost art of combining words in immortal lines that rhyme or don't... Although I am no Shakespeare, poetry was the first form of written art that I began to create. It is my first love.    My first poem, "Untitled" (of course titled such) was the musings of a 6th grader who didn't know much but that she wanted to be like Anne of Green Gables caught up in the ethereal musings of a writer. I think if you ask any person they are most likely to tell you they had a moment in adolescence in which they were a poet themselves. It is how we wrote our life. Our diary. Our story...a lot of times in terrible rhyming form.    But, I digress. Everyone should be a poet. If not of words, then of life. We should do things with a grace that blends our life into a rhythmic beauty. It is t...

  There is this scene in Deep Impact  at the end of the film in which 2 characters are standing on the shores of the beach watching/waiting for the tsunami of water, the product of the asteroid, to come sweep them away. It isn't a secret it is coming; it isn't a secret what is going to happen. The inevitable is death. Complete ending.   Every year, I sit and wait for the tsunami that is August 15th. I wait for the inevitable that is this day. The grief, the pain, the flood of immobilizing memories to come sweep me away. It isn't a secret it is coming; it isn't a secret what is going to happen. And come it does. In strange ways, it comes. And the odd thing, I always think I am going to be ready. I always think I will be able to assuage the cavernous void that he left behind. Laughable I know. Anyone who understands one modicum of grief understands that we can't assuage the void. We have to embrace it. It doesn't go away; it doesn't close up. Perhaps it might ...