Land of milk and honey

It’s official: my baby has self-weaned completely at 16 months. My milk is draining away, the ducts are closing up shop, laying off workers, restructuring. I feel like I am crawling out of a dark (albeit cozy) den back into who or what I was before I became a food source. My cells will realign themselves to reflect the new me, since I am of course forever changed. From now on, I am the land of just honey, a source of sweetness and cuddles for both little boys. I will never go back; trying to reconnect with the “old me” is an illusion. Parenting, being a bio-mom, both roles are powerful and perennial and root out any weaker plants growing nearby. To grow a marriage relationship, to grow a new selfhood within this new reality, is going to take major grunt work and fertilizer. Maybe I’ll start tomorrow. These days, I crave the oblivion of good take-out sushi and Nashville on TV, or reading the teen fantasy series du jour. Through the blessed fog, I know that I deeply crave connection with A. I am grieving the loss of nursing Daniel, though it has thankfully been a slow process (kind little guy!). But my heart and body are ready to get back on the A-train, to start making time to re-route ourselves onto a better track. It’s now or never. In the hustle of our family life, it’s not easy to remember to notice each other, or to reach out. Sometimes it suddenly is though, like a surprise movie cuddle (for me) or coffee made (for her). Recently I can feel the wind shifting, this hot summer weather mixed with a cool breeze from the lake are both portents of sweet things coming to us. I’m not “back” exactly, but it feels something like that. It will be an evolving process, the little deaths of doors closing leave space for living a new me, a new us. And hey, I’m all honey now!

E