the door that glows
on second babies, and leaving the light on.
There is a door that glows. My next baby is on one side of the door, and I am on the other. We gravitate towards each other, we hover, the door pulls. I stroke the wood. Neither of us turns the knob.
The door cracked open before my daughter turned one. I felt the warm air slide through the gap. I saw the shimmer, then pressed it firmly closed when she turned two. One day, I told myself, I will fling the door open with my whole heart. In a year or two.
It has been more than a year or two. Opening the door scares me.
Not opening the door scares me.
I am obsessed with the door.
I take LH tests, just because. I read about spirit babies, just because. My daughter pretends her hands are her baby siblings and cradles them close to her heart, picks out children’s books at the library called “Waiting For Baby,” asks me when her sister will be here, tries to climb back inside me. The door glows and vibrates in my belly, materializes in my mind while I’m driving down Main Street, cooking eggs, laying in the dark nursing, then dissolves, only to reorganize once more in the back of my mind at some inopportune moment.
I tripped into motherhood the first time. Often, I find myself wishing that would happen again. It sounds silly. You probably think that means I am ready, but I have never actually, truly, decisively tried to have a baby, and the old part of me that was afraid to have children is, to my surprise, still here. I thought she died. Instead, it seems she simply went into hibernation during my first two postpartum years, back when I was telling everyone I wanted to have eight more children. She emerges now a new shape, arguing with me, planting seeds of doubt as I consider all of this. The trepidation I feel around it is a bit shocking to me, considering the fact that I already did it, and loved it.
This would be different.
Maybe you have heard this mom’s song-gone-viral, “Just a Mom.” Recently, she shared another one about whether she’d have a second baby. She describes her uncertainty as leaving the porch light on/when everyone’s already home. That’s it.
I feel so deeply the power, the possibility, the pressure of being in my fertile years. So much to consider. Often, I tell myself that at this moment in time, nothing matters more than my fertility, that this is what this chapter is meant for, that everything else will come. I love where I am in motherhood. I love Her and Me. I love the freedom I have now that she is a little older. I feel the universal, bittersweet ache of watching her charge into Little Kidhood, small arms pumping, hair matted and wild, her baby-self just a hazy memory, one that I only catch glimpses of when she’s peacefully asleep. A friend used the word “devastated” to describe the tether between her and her daughter lengthening, the feeling of watching your child grow up and away from you at the speed of light. That’s how it feels - beautiful, heartbreaking, devastating. Time never the same. Life never so urgent.