So This is the New Year

[A rare occasion - I felt like writing a poem to share. Inspired by the new year, I put it our as a gesture of solidarity with writers and readers alike. Good things be to all.]

-

3-2-1

With the dawning sun

a new year opens its newborn eyes

Stretching wide

Heaving its first breath (in - out),

beckoned with caution,

uninvited, but expected,

celebrated - and feared

Auld lang syne sung

showers with tunes of who we were,

what we did,

rhythms of whys,

but all give way to

what (or who) we will become

(and when).

A day like another, yet we

relent

reflect

repent

regret

and resolve,

seek to be washed clean

by the holy water of annual renewal.

One hand waves hesitant goodbyes,

the other props open possibility

One leg in

other out

Relieved by transition,

Exhilarated by potential

Feeling at once like naive children,

but weather-worn from sojourns

knowing all to well that we know nothing.

Whispered promises are made

to her (I will)

to him (I will)

to me (I might)

as the carousel spins, melodies drifting upward,

we dance to whatever song

we choose to hear

hearts beating in rhythmic synchronicity

until we are called home

to begin

again.

One, and done.

It always happens: some kind, well meaning person asks when we will be having a second kid. My responses are usually clever and sometimes curt, but with each inquiry, I am forced to examine my stance of the second-kid issue. I'm one-and-done.As hard as it is to close that door, still being young enough to physically conceive (if not mentally or emotionally), I have considered what it would mean to have a second child, and it would kill me.

Many people say things like, "You don't realize you have the capacity to love something that much until you have a child," to which I will agree. Then comes the but - "But when you have a second, it will happen again."This presumption is what I find most challenging, and most threatening.

No thanks. That's the poison I cannot swallow.

I love my child so much, it hurts. To have a second would end me.

From the second Ezra was born, love became tangible, no longer an abstract concept; the emotion I felt grew forth from me like an appendage, something that was always potentially in existence prior to his birth, but afterwards, physically apparent, present like an arm or a leg - and even more fragile. This fragility has caused me to hurt, daily, and incessantly.

It hurts knowing that I have something I care for so overwhelmingly that it envelops my being in a sort of suffocating cocoon of affection. 

Driving Ezra home from the hospital, I called my mother. Very sincerely, I told her that I understood, then, what I hadn't prior. I will always worry, from that day forward, and it would never, ever cease, a vicious and enduring cycle, my proverbial, emotional rocking chair - back and forth, but never getting anywhere - until the day I die. 

It's chronic pain for which there is no treatment.

There are times when I feel like an elephant is standing upon my chest as I become consumed by anxiety. This is a new feature since parenthood, and controls me, rendering me incapable of being the person I once was: carefree, enjoying reckless behavior, thinking of the near, but not distant, future. Not anymore. What little shred of identity that remains in me is preserved in amber, a harder, parental exterior has crystalized over the faint remains of a former person. Yes, I'm still me, but I've been changed in a way that is irreversible.

I am consumed, willfully, by love, and it pains me.

This love is the best pain I have ever felt, and, masochistic as it is, I will continue to ache as long as I can, but I can't do it twice.