On Quiet, Writing, Quivering Hands, and Grieving Moments Before They’re Gone

“It’s quiet,” I thought, lying in my son’s bed at a much too late hour but also the right one, after my re-entry to our home after a weekend away. “Tickle left underarm,” he requested, shifting and raising it up. “Feels good,” he confided, forehead to forehead.  

He twisted and directed my fingers to the next best song-tickle place on his torso. He asked for the same song that I’ve sung to him since he was a piece of rice in my body. I lightly scratch his neck, his back, his arms. I stop, and I inhale. “He missed me,” I thought as he turned toward the wall. Exhaled.

When, exactly, did he start noticing my absence and what month was it when the sweet smell of his baby-head transformed into a universal kid smell?  I wonder about the underlying feral scent of all children.

I like that it’s made of mulch, sun, and dirt. I like that it’s universal, and completely mine, tonight.

I remember the ago, and a time when his head smelled new. That particular scent comes with no worthy adjectives but each of us who has smelled a newborn remembers it. It’s transforming. It’s hope and memory.

We embrace that scent and are reminded that we too, once smelled new.

Tonight, in his bed, I breathe. I trace his hand and know that one day, his knuckles will no longer pudge with dimples and will instead sprout peppered hair. He will smell like Man.

I breathe this in, not knowing when this scent and this silence, his pudgy knuckles tucked into my swollen ones will end. Tucked in now, lolling towards the wall, sighing his sleepy sigh.

“Stay here, all the dark,” he says.

I snuggle closer, cherishing. Remembering the quiet of before, when he didn’t speak, and how different and scary that felt. Remembering his first “Stay here forever?”  Knowing, too, that I already mourn the last time he says that, although it hasn’t yet happened.

It’s possible that tonight was the last time he’ll ask me to “Stay for all the dark.”

I give myself breath and space to grieve the moment, even as it hasn’t yet happened.

***

“It’s quiet,” I thought, sitting on a stone wall in Massachusetts on a recent morning with six women, also quiet. Writing. Our prompts were chosen objects. My first reaction was to grab a silver rattle that was almost identical to one buried in my dresser drawer until I remembered that the memories of it were never mine, and only cherished because of what I thought might have been. Instead, I chose a tiny clear bottle of water.

I don’t know what that bottle meant to the person who filled it, and I don’t know whether it was filled with tap or with the Pacific. I grabbed it because for me, it was filled with the salt from all of the oceans that I’ve dived in, and had forgotten. I may have forgotten forever except that I bore witness to words of the Aegean, and to a beautiful woman’s two weeks remembered out loud.

I chose the tiny bottle for its quiet. I chose it for the peace of scuba diving, and I chose it because my quivering hands and overflowing emotions were unexpected, embarrassing, and freeing.

***

“It’s so quiet,” I thought once my breathing had regulated during my first scuba diving experience. Years ago, I imagined myself as a water baby. I dove, was mindful to not block the turtles’ ascents, brushed flesh with fish and rays, and hovered over an abyss in Turks and Caicos where the whales swam by.

I remember accidentally sinking next to the underwater cliff, checking my depth gauge and thinking “oh shit.” The grief that I needed to ascend or die. It was all so quiet. The only sound was my inhale and the bubbles of my exhales burping by my ears. It was peace, and breathing was the only requirement. Well, that, and doing so in intervals to ensure that earth blood and water blood balanced rather than collide.

***

“I can’t focus without the quiet,” I thought during the sharing sessions at my retreat. But it was quiet. The difference was that it was witnessed quiet and somehow that feels more vulnerable and seen. “Why the fuck are my hands shaking?” I still don’t know, but I imagine that it had something to do with writing out loud. Of feeling like I wasn’t what they expected. Except, whatever ever is? 

***

I type this in the quiet of my home, and I miss being there, and wish I had the same women as witnesses. I miss them. 

***

“It’s so quiet,” I think, two days later, as I tiptoe out of my son’s room. And yet, it’s not. There are the creaks of home, the sounds of my son’s breathing, and the ripples of connections. All of them. 

*** 

 

Special thanks to Ivy the weeniebutt who I got to meet IRL after she drove me to the airport. She’s even more amazing than you’d think. She’s incredible.

If you’re wondering about the writing group, and how this retreat weekend, came to be, please visit Jena’s page. You won’t regret it.