Remembering and Forgetting.

My little boy is 6 months old, and I'm starting to forget.

I close my eyes really tight and try to conjure up the moments leading up to his birth. That incredible pain. Fear. The anticipation of meeting him. The strange wonder if it really was a him or if the doctors had somehow detected the "It's a boy!"-fact wrong. The clinical taste in the room. The sweat slicking all too easily off my skin. The early afternoon light peering through the window, bending in prisms around the Atlanta skyline. My husband's face, spilling over with hope and confidence in me. I can see his mouth forming words, coaching, encouraging, but I can't hear anything. He's speaking to me, for me, cheering me on, but I can't hear. I want to hear it, but I can only feel. His words are pulsing me. My body metabolizes every morsel, each utter, energizing the next push, and the next, and the next. Crying? No, there's no time for that. All the energy, emotion, spirit, power, it's all channeled into these few final, steady, manic moments. Breathe and push. Push like you never knew you could. The intrinsic, most feminine forces of my existence knitting together for the final gasps. This heady, rich sensation. Like being close to death but also very close to life. Everything suddenly crisps and I am there, body stammering, squatting, peeling my way around, and then.

Then.

I. Am. So. Glad. It is over.

He's here. He's mine. Wow, that's what he looks like. He looks so small and yet so so big. Rippled body, ruddy face, covered in a slimy something that I should find disgusting, except that I can't. Because he is so mine. And instantly I am his. And I know know know this is what I was created to do. I don't understand the journey until that very moment, the whole life journey that I've taken, but all of the sudden I know that he was part of the purpose all along.

Well, I guess I can remember it.

But I am forgetting a little bit day by day and I don't know if that's a good thing. Because I want to remember it as much as I want to forget it. And at the same time I find myself staring at him, this little boy who can already do so much, this beautiful specimen that I created, and I just wonder if it happened to me at all. I wonder if it was all unreal, if I'm remembering some scene from a movie, and not the most authentic moment of my being.

These are the feelings I haven't quite been able to process for 6 months. Six months to the day, actually. I'm starting to come out of a fog, though. Out of the fog, and I am grasping for this powerful memory that I may or may not be able to really remember. But as it unfolds itself to me, I am undone and overwhelmed at the gift. Staring in wonder and amazement at my dear-hearted, beautiful boy.