Mother

The exhaustion pours from her in waves; I can feel them wash over me just watching her move. Her body, impossibly thin, propelled forward as though the grass is deep, dry sand. Honey. Molasses. Quicksand. Each footstep a visible effort — she walks across the school grounds as though she were tackling her 73rd mile, a chubby, cherub-cheeked baby balanced on her bony hip. A sigh leaves her. I can see it but not hear it.

Everything about this pulls me to her, my heart is cracked wide open like a wound I risk exposing to open air. It is like this every day, a product of motherhood, no doubt, a product of being open and feeling it all — all the wonder and sadness of the world, all of the beauty and vulnerability and fear from loving someone with all your might and setting him, setting them, out into this world…

I fight the urge to gently pull the heavy baby from her arms, take the load, give her a place to sit in the shade of the giant old oak that looms overhead. I want to make it easier, tell her I’m here. We are not close, it would be strange, the moment passes. She walks on.

photo credit: Sally Mann, Falling Child, 1989