My Shower
A year and a half in, I often feel far away from who I emerged as after giving birth – that confident, calm, focused person, born anew. The mornings can be stressful, even though we have nowhere to be. Cooking and young, active toddlers don’t really mix. But then I take a shower.
I can close my eyes in my shower and remember my hands grasping the walls as I kneeled on the floor, Joe and my doula holding the shower head over my back, telling me to keep going. I can remember not wanting to go on, not caring about the outcome, just wanting to be free from this fucking soul wrenching pain and writhing. I can hear my own pleading – to know when it would end, to know where I was in the process. I can feel the cold, hard shower tiles on my knees and how badly I wanted to move but couldn’t. How every time the contractions stopped, I just begged for more rest and forgot to actually rest.
I remember looking into Joe’s eyes as he thanked me – for doing this for our family, for doing it this way – in our home.
I remember my legs and back aching.
I remember feeling desperate.
I remember the early postpartum days when my mom would come over in the mornings and hold sleeping Jonah, and I would take a shower – the biggest luxury of all. I’d revel in the wonder of my body. I’d be gentle with her, caress her. I’d massage my tender breasts and check for clogged ducts. I’d lovingly let the hot water run over them, soothing them, thanking them for giving life and nourishment to my little sweetheart. I’d feel deep gratitude for my breastfeeding and birthing experience – that it all happened my way. I’d wash my body with such care and appreciation, my jaw dropping each time I thought about what it was capable of. I loved my curves and plumpness;
I was alive and squishy and nourished, even on my most tired days.
I want to feel these things. I want to relive them. I want to remember that woman who birthed her baby in her bedroom surrounded by support and peace. I want to embody her screams and pleads, her strength and determination, her primal knowing, her ability to let go and be out of control.
I am her.
I lose her sometimes among the muck of the mundane, amidst logistics and the weight of a pandemic, amidst cooking and cleaning and planning. She is pure presence. That woman – timeless, boundless, revered – is my essence, and I can feel her here in this shower and in the dark, still hours of the night when I look over to where the birth tub sat next to my bed, where my sweetheart was born, inches from where he now rests next to me.
I re-find my strength each time I find her. When I’m lost, she looks for me and begs for me to see her. Sometimes it’s too hard to take that invitation, but when I do, I return. I return to something larger than me. I return to the blood and beauty of magic.
