story

by lani

food and shelter notwithstanding, there’s a lot that i don’t have these days.

i don’t have spit up stains on my clothes.

i don’t have sling tying skills.

i don’t have any idea how to “encourage latch.”

i don’t have caps in my power sockets or gates on my stairs.

i don’t have diaper change arguments with joel.

i also don’t have diapers.

i don’t have an infant seat in the car or pacifiers in the glove compartment.

i don’t have to “sleep when the baby sleeps.”

i don’t have memories of the first look, the first diaper, the first grin.

i don’t have sky.

but i do have a story.

it is a horror story … to this day, some of the awful moments in this story make my stomach drop and my eyes widen in terror.

it is a murder mystery … back and forth, i wonder who is the culprit in sky’s death: myself, God, the universe, the occasional tylenol … and, like in any good mystery, i get the impression that at the end of this story i will find some unimaginable plot twists.

it is a fantasy … a brief wild journey into this fanciful elusive dreamworld of parenthood. sometimes still, like susan in the chronicles of narnia, i can’t quite believe that it was real.

more than anything – this will sounds cliché but i don’t care – it is a romance. a great epic of love running many tangled directions … between a husband and wife, a mother and child, a father and child, a couple and their family, a family and their community, a God and his children and their child who is also his child (because the family of God is confusing like that).

but – and here is my confession – i don’t want this story of love, with all its tangles and intensity. i want another story, a less interesting story. i want a halcyon biography so idyllic that my telling of it would put you to sleep, and you wouldn’t be reading this post because i didn’t write this post because i’m too busy uploading baby pictures to facebook.

and that is where i am today, sitting and pouting in the middle of this transcendent epic of love. i would trade it in a heartbeat for a few mundane spit up stains.