The Unspoken

I'm a riddle in nine syllables.
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.
- Sylvia Plath

 

I was watching my son put together a puzzle tonight and it suddenly seems to me that we should stay exactly like this, forever. That he should be four and I should be his mom and we should remain, suspended in time, as we are today, just the three of us. I remember my parents discussing similar wishes when I was a child but I could not understand then their urgency.

There will soon be four of us and this dynamic, the one in which we can sit and watch him do a puzzle without worrying about another boy in another room, will soon be lost forever. This will be our last Thanksgiving, just the three of us. And Thanksgiving is, of course, the year's last really calm holiday before the others begin. It'll be Christmas so soon after and then the New Year and then the baby - the lead up to forever. I am afraid of not being a good mother to two of them and sometimes I think I only have energy and attention for one. Most parents probably feel this way at one time or another, I realize, but it doesn't seem like an easy or assured concept to understand until it happens. In other words, I can't really know until I try, but the time for trying is fast approaching.

I'm excited to meet my next child but anxious about his care and keeping, in addition to how exactly he's getting out here. That we're all born the same way is truly a curious point; no one really talks about it and there's a hormone, an actual chemical process designed by biology, to help us forget it. Time and trust aren't at all the same thing.