You Will Fly {Five-Minute Friday}

I’m linking up once again with Lisa-Jo Baker for Five-Minute Fridays. Today’s prompt is FLY…

A newly-born Mama, I woke up to a bad dream. This was not a safe place to birth a baby. I’d been tucked away in a bubble, feeling invincible. But now—pieces of my insides existed outside of me, outside of my control.

I remember the stiff hospital bed and holding him, cheek to cheek. I inhaled his perfect scent, and sobbed.

The world is going to hurt you.

So I clutched tight my swaddled bundle and wrote him the first of many Letters from Mom. I wrote for comfort, but not to comfort him. He was already happy and warm and snuggled in close. I was the scared one, trying to hold it together.

But I learned, a day at a time.

I learned to take the rest when it came, to put my feet up. I learned how to do life at home and let people help. I learned we needed the outdoors, on all the days but the frozen ones. And I hovered. I took him out but shielded my fragile human from the elements—and flying insects—and other people’s germs.

I learned to be me but not really me anymore.

I felt so young on the inside. Too young to know everything a Mama knows. So I kept my own Mom close those first weeks, until I knew I could do it. Actually, until she had to head back home.

My Mom kept telling me I had this. I could do it. She taught impromptu courses–How to Bathe a Wet, Angry Baby and Burping For Real Results. {I cried through the first and failed the latter.} I cried a lot those days and had no idea why. I was both gloriously happy and shockingly terrified. Mom said it was all normal. Hormonal-normal.

You’ll feel normal again once the abundance of hormones leave your body, she said. Actually, I hate to tell you this, but you’ll never feel normal again, at least not the old normal. She said it with a laugh, like one who’d been around this block a few times or four.

But you’ll do great.

You’ll fly.