unhurried & unworried

it entered my mind as I left the gym today, sunny and crisp outside, my friend at home with my baby: I feel strong. since becoming a mother, I am, without a doubt, stronger than I’ve ever been — in every sense that I understand that word to mean. physically strong. strength enough to hold this growing, squirmy boy in my arms with relative ease. mentally strong. a clearness in my mind’s eye. emotionally strong. unapologetically tender, with the capacity to keep moving. stronger in my ability to hold structure for soft things.

with manny away for two weeks, and while stellan recovers from a nasty cold, I was so grateful to lyndsay for the ability to get to the gym today. for an hour out of the house. alone. to sweat. each of those things become individually and equally precious. there’s nothing like limited choice to make a gym visit so sweet. nothing like no escape hatch to encourage the decision to care for yourself. free time feels different these days. juicier. I still know how to idle, don’t get me wrong. but currently, I’m writing as he sleeps. listening to my evening serenade, the trickling water noise machine in another room, through a baby cam speaker off to my side. I’ll go to sleep tonight, creeping into my own covers, where his bassinet sits next to our bed. I thought for sure by now he’d be staying overnight in his own room. turns out, I’m in no rush.

I was not looking forward to Manny’s absence. not only would I miss him — and miss him doubly for Stellan’s sake, not just mine — I was dreading the prolonged time of single-momming, my longest stint yet of perpetual parenting. I knew the daily morning shuffle before daycare drop-off, of running late to work while trying to remember pump parts and my lunch (assuming I made one the night before), finding space and time at the office to pump, hoping he has enough milk before finding more time for a midday drop-off, more pumping, running to make daycare pickup, hoping to get the most of our time together before tucking him back into bed. I could handle the 4-day sprint, but 14 days on my own felt truly disheartening.

And yet mostly, right now, I feel unrushed, unworried. I feel a calming confidence of having experienced another thing that at one point seemed so overwhelming. but here I am, living it, and I guess that is what I am learning too. that you can and will do things that at one point seemed dreadful and too much. as Manny likes to say, "no feeling lasts forever." I appreciate when the good stuff comes; because, this too, shall pass. all of it will. and by acknowledging it, writing it down, I hope to remember the good stuff and encourage its continued presence.