Here In This World

Once she was born, I was never not afraid.

Joan Didion
Blue Nights



I didn't understand the weight of the worry, but it can crush you if you let it. If you are only responsible for yourself, your own life, then you understand that you can make stupid decisions and return from them. You can move forward and learn from them. But it all starts with the late nights looking over her crib trying to hear her breathe, and the panicked feeling of placing your hand on her tiny chest to make sure you can actually feel it moving up and down. It happens when you pull her arm through her pajamas and she squawks and you know you pulled too tight and you feel badly about it long after you should, when she bonks her head for the first time after slipping out of your arms and you ask your husband if you should worry about her being concussed, when you wake up the following morning to find the bruise blooming yellow and blue and you know it happened on your watch. It happens when you wait at a crosswalk on Northwest Avenue and look down at her sleeping face and know that you are the person who can't let go. You are the one who needs to get her safely to the other side. It is a weight, daily, constant, and it is something I have to surrender by the minute, and it is something that will never go away because she is here in this world.