About a Broken Boy

I couldn’t have known that a baby was born with the inclination to stay awake all night, and sleep all day.  I’d no idea that they came out of the womb and if it was daytime, they wanted only to sleep.  But when night rolled around?  Well, it was time to party.  Ethan and I spent five days in the hospital together after my emergency c-section. I was a new and anxious mom, and I did everything the nurses told me to do, including sending him away to the nursery for about twelve hours a day.  Each night, they’d load him up in his bassinet and wheel him out of my room and I’d try to sleep, but my heart and mind wouldn’t let me.  Looking back and knowing what I do now, it was because I was experiencing severe separation anxiety and I should have kept him in the room with me, just as I learned to do with my other babies.

They’d take him away and just like clockwork, exactly three hours later there would be a light knock and the door would creak open and my room would fill with light from the hallway.  The nurse would be there with that little bassinet and she’s pick up my baby and she’d whisper in the darkness, “Mrs. Andrew, he’s ready to eat.”  I’d slowly sit up, at least the best I could after being cut from hip to hip.  When my eyes would finally adjust to the light, I’d see him there.  And almost fifteen years later, I still perfectly remember how he’d look and how the butterflies flew in my stomach upon seeing him again.  Those three hours when he was gone were terrible, and the nurse would always hold him up and I’d smile so big.  He was always swaddled in that blue and white blanket and he looked like a tightly rolled burrito with this fat face sticking out from the top.  His eyes would be so wide and they’d dart around at the sound of my voice.  He was ready to eat, and he was ready for Mommy snuggles.

A few weeks before he was born, I went to a movie by myself.  I’d never been to a movie by myself, but I ended up loving how it felt to sit there in the dark with no one around me.  This particular theatre had a restaurant inside that made food that was allowed to be taken into the movie, and I ordered a big plate of lasagna and garlic bread.  I sat and watched the movie and balanced the plate on my giant belly and watched as the baby moved and kicked and how the plate moved in accordance.  It was December 2003 and the movie would turn out to be one of my favorites that I’d purchase when it came out on DVD.  It was called “Love Actually” and to this day, I have tender feelings when I watch it because I think of the time I went on a date with my unborn baby and how just the two of us watched it together while I devoured a heaping serving of lasagna.

I was still a student when I was pregnant.  I was working on my degree in education, and Ethan went to school with me every day that fall.  I’d walk the campus that was full of hills, and I remember how when the leaves changed in October, I’d don’t know that I’d ever felt so happy up to that point in my life.  I was having a baby and I dreamed of the next year when that baby would be crawling and how I’d take him to the park and we’d play in the leaves and we’d pick out pumpkins at the farmer’s market and I imagined what kind of costume we’d dress him in for his very first Halloween.  I’ll never forget those days when we walked the campus together and how I’d always make a stop in the Student Union to buy a sandwich and a chocolate milk.  Ethan was mine and mine alone and I shared him with no one.  It’s like the two of us were soulmates and together we shared a secret of which no one else was privy.

He was ten days old when Cody kicked me out.  It was February and the days and nights were dark and the snow outside didn’t look like it would be melting any time soon.  There was a nasty inversion in the valley and everything was grey, and I was crying a lot.  Baby blues were hitting me pretty hard and having never been parents before, neither of us knew what was going on.  But one night, Cody insisted that I get out to run an errand without the baby.  I refused.  He demanded.  I pumped a bottle of milk and left the apartment with the instructions that I was not allowed to return home for at least an hour.  Cody was certain that escaping those confining walls with a new baby who insisted on eating every hour on the hour would do me good, and I got in the car with a quivering lip but put on a brave face and started watching the clock.

I ended up at the mall and decided I could use a couple of new nursing bras, so I wandered in the same maternity store where I’d purchased numerous maternity clothes before.  The sales clerk was sweet and I explained that my baby was just a few days old and that my engorged bosom needed new accommodations, and she set me up in a dressing room.  I sat on the little seat provided and looked in the mirror as I gripped those bras in hand.  Suddenly and out of nowhere, emotions poured out of me and I sat in the dressing room and wept.  Dejavu had beset me and I recalled all the times I’d been in that very dressing room as I tried to find new clothes to fit over my expanding body.  And here I was again, only this time my baby was at home and I was stricken with grief because I was no longer pregnant. 

But why? 

My pregnancy had not been easy and I was sick for nine months and gained seventy pounds and was then cut open to delivery him, which went starkly against the natural birth of which I’d prepared so diligently.  So why did I want to be pregnant again?  Sitting there that night, it hit be that it was the first time I’d been away from my baby since coming home.  Aside from the trips he made to the nursery in the hospital, never had he been more than an arm’s reach away.  Suddenly, I was hit with the realization that he was no longer just mine, but I would now share him with the world.  He was safe in my belly. He was happy.  I could protect him, and I no longer could.  Oh, how I grieved for that time of innocence when I was naïve enough to think it would be easy when my heart was beating on the outside of my body.

After the mall, I still had too much time before I was allowed back home, so I stopped at Target.  I bought some diapers and binkies and breast pads, and then I found myself in the music section.  I passed a display of newly released soundtracks for the same movie I’d watched a few weeks before, and I smiled because I remembered how much I loved the movie and that it represented that sweet time when Ethan and I shared some lasagna.  So I bought my items, got in the car, and put the CD in the player.  I sat in the parking lot and when the first song came on, my eyes filled with tears and I listened and I sobbed. 

In an instant, I saw my new baby as a boy, and then a teenager, and then a man, and in all of it, I was plagued with this overwhelming fear that one day, he would experience heartache.  He’d know sadness.  He’d know disappointment, and maybe he’d even know grief.  I sat and I cried, thinking of all the things I could no longer protect him from.  I thought of all the pain in life, and how one day, he’d feel it.  He’d get sick.  He’d get injured and one day, he would even die.  The rosy hughed lenses through which I’d imagined his perfect life, were suddenly clouded and grey and I knew that one day, my sweet and precious and perfect little baby would know the heartache this world had to offer.  I’d surely felt it too much in my life, and it killed me that I wouldn’t be able to spare him from feeling it, too.

I went home that night and I snuggled my new baby and I stroked his head as he ate and I made him a promise.  Through tears, I promised that I would do everything in my power to protect him.  To make him happy.  To keep him safe.  To always be there for him.  To take his burdens and carry them. 

I promised him.

I promised him.

I promised him.

And somewhere along the line, I broke that promise.  It’s been almost fifteen years since that cold and snowy night, and this incredible boy of mine has known heartache more than most people his age.  I couldn’t protect him from life, and he’s walked around for years so lost, so broken, so shattered, and in more pain that one should be allowed.  It’s getting to be too much for him, and he’s about ready to let go.  Last night, I sat down with him and retold the memories of seeing him come into my hospital room like a baby burrito, and how I sat in the dressing room and cried when I thought of no longer having him to myself.  I did my damndest to convey my love for him, but I failed because there are no words that can explain this kind of love. 

I don’t know if he heard me. 

Everything I feared for him back then is coming to pass, and I am powerless.  I’d take his burdens in a second and carry them for him.  I’d take all of his pain and keep it in my heart.  This boy of mine who is trying to become a man, but is so broken, struggles every single day and it’s the worst kind of thing to sit back and watch and know there’s nothing I can do.  But I guess I can keep loving him with the same ferocity that I did when we first met because for me, nothing has changed.  I still think of him as that eight pound eight ounce twenty-two inch baby who tried to rip me apart at his birth. I still see his chubby face poking up from the swaddling blankets.  I still think of him kicking the lasagna plate, and my heart breaks in half each time I consider how difficult life is for my Ethan.

He’s a boy who is caught between innocence and experience, as if he's dangling over a ravine with a rope in each hand, desperately struggling to find safety on one side or the other.  How I wish I could hug him tightly enough to squeeze all the pain right out of his tender spirit.