Empty (Fathom Mag)
Last night I sat in bed with my husband, Jeremy, and dumped out a bag of 72 empty balloons. Between wide inhales and forceful exhales, we filled up the red, green, blue, and orange orbs to capacity, then tied each one off like a knot in an umbilical cord. It’s a ritual we enact for each of our three sons’ birthdays. For three days of each year, dozens of bouncing colorful balloons spill all over the floors of our old home waiting to greet the birthday boy in the morning. Jeremy had loaded armfuls into an oversized trash bag to carry downstairs when he got quiet, looked over at me and said, “Sixteen years, Ash. Can you even believe it?” I told him I couldn’t, I was so full of love I thought I might explode. I walked down the hall to our oldest son’s room and found him getting ready for bed. “Sixteen tomorrow, dude,” I told him, “It’s going so fast.” He nodded with a quiet smile then answered back in his deep highschool boy voice, “Yeah, it really is. It feels kind of strange.” I wrapped my arms around him and gave him a long squeeze, inhaling him, said I love you, and sent him to bed. Then I spent the next hour on our bedroom floor filling empty boxes with birthday gifts.
Sixteen years ago I rocked my body back and forth, white-knuckling Jeremy’s hand as I growled my way through the pain of a thirty-hour labor. The rumors are true: It is hard, sometimes excruciating work, to bring a human into the world through a hole the size of a grape. Lucky for me, Jeremy didn’t scare easy. He stayed close and present as I moaned and made guttural, animal-like sounds while surrendering to the pain. He even kept calm and went without dinner after I screamed from across the room, “If you want to stay married, you better get that meatball sub the hell outta here right now!” I remember thinking, If I can just climb these walls or out of my body, I will survive this. At one point between a few particularly potent contractions I looked at Jeremy and said, “I’m dying.” He got eye to eye with me, put his hands on my face and said, “Ash, you are not dying. You are bringing our son into the world. We get to meet Micah today.” Oh yeah, I thought, I forgot what all this pain was for. Joy is coming.
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