Attachment

See these flowers? They are lovely, but cost me two days of pain and exhaustion. Ridiculous, I know.

On Sunday, a beautiful, sunny warm day, I couldn’t take lying around anymore, so I planted some flowers and stayed on my feet, stooping and dragging and carrying more than I should have. It didn’t feel like much at the time. Most days I am so active around the house and garden and with the kids that I hardly sit down. And I love it that way! But of course, two weeks after surgery with an open wound still taking most of my body’s energy to heal, I was not yet ready for this kind of activity, so I paid for it.

It is the hardest thing, trying to lie still. I am not happy milling about all day long, especially with little people who call me and cry for me- just absolute torture. Emil has been going through major attachment issues because of my week-long disappearance. When I think back to the day I went into the ER, I was in so much pain I hardly even said good-bye to the boys. And then I was gone to them for an entire week, which for a two-year-old is an eternity. When Emil and I were finally reunited, he wouldn’t come to me and acted shy and confused. After I was home for a couple of days, his feelings turned to anger, then rage. He would yell at me, run over and try to hit me, reject me and run away from me- want me, but want to hurt me all the same.

Now, a week later, he won’t let me out of his sight and freaks out if he thinks I’m gone. The whole thing was clearly traumatic for him, and despite knowing this was no one’s fault, I feel horrible about it all. On top of that, trying to make him feel secure again means being there for him- responding to him quickly and tenderly, giving lots of extra hugs and reassuring him countless times at bedtime that I am just in the other room, not completely gone. Resting is literally impossible right now.

I say all this not as a plea for sympathy- lord knows you have all been doling out plenty of that lately! It’s just a piece of the puzzle that I had not anticipated. As a former social worker, I encountered many children (most of them in the foster care system) with severe attachment issues and subsequent behavior problems. It was heartbreaking and challenging to do individual counseling with these children, whose little lives had been so broken apart it- it seemed that it would take years and years of therapy for progress and healthy relationships. And I know Emil’s attachment issues are minor compared to them, but oh how it hurts my heart to have caused this pain in his little life. Oh, motherhood. Do you ever get easier?