We Are Not Shells

Photo by Darya Jum on Unsplash

My girl climbs onto my lap. We lay outside under the shade of an ancient tree. She is hot and sweaty as I brush a stray flaxen wisp from her brow. She burrows into my neck and braids her hands into mine. Her hands reside here, quietly settled into the crevices and tributaries of each added year. The experiences felt, the places seen. The tingle, the ache. The joy of first touch and the grief of last. These are my mother’s hands, and my father’s. They are my son’s and my daughter’s. 

And yet, still all mine. 

My work.

My healing. 

My making and revealing. 

Drop by drop, a river of stories held tightly in her grasp and finally set free.

Every woman is a cavern. Inside, we’re an electric expanse of stars, space, and magnetic fields and moon tides and dark matter. We are vast and uncharted.

I keep thinking of how our mothers tried to fill their hungry bellies with diet culture and jazzercise and how cigarettes and a stream of endlessly impossible standards were supposed to appease their appetites for more. I keep thinking of the shells we can so easily become, hollowed-out homes for the hopes and dreams of others.

Here I am! Here I can be! 

Someone asked me once if I thought she should marry her conservative boyfriend, and I felt my bones clang and sting. How dearly and tenderly I loved her at that moment. Can you breathe? I wanted to ask her, Can you strip down naked and be enough? Can you speak your mind? Can you do these things without shame or repercussions? Anything other than a wholehearted yes means it’s time to run! I wanted to tear open the sky with my scream. I wanted to scoop her up and tell her to go and go and go. That there is a whole wide world waiting for her. That she can do it. She can just decide to. Pack up and go somewhere with room for her to be all of herself.

Instead, I sit staring at a blinking cursor. Who am I to talk? I spent so many years feeding him from my plate. Take me. Here I am—a willing servant. I can go without. I can have the scraps. I can find a way for it to be plenty.  I can be a shell. 

How expertly we slip into nothingness. I know what it is to inch myself smaller. Knees tucked under, stomach sucking in, ribs dipping like mountains under my skin, lungs barely holding air. Look how small and empty and pretty I can be!

It took me decades to know what I know now. We are not hollow. We are hallowed. We are not ocean floors, swirling and smashing the calcium carbonate of old dead things, ancient sand destined to become homes for someone else. We are the ocean itself. We are the moon and the tide. We are the whales who glide and sing their haunting songs. We are the stars and the black holes that swallow you whole. 

We are thin places,

heaven kissing earth.

we are both the stars and the dust,

we are

the kiss itself. 

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FIVE FAVES

1. This playlist. It’s giving Diane Keaton vibes, and we are all about it! Mercy and I sing along to every song.

2. Let’s keep the grandma theme going, shall we? I started a raised bed garden. I built it myself, planting each bulb and bush with something tender. Gardening is teaching me another facet of mother.

3. This Greek Salad recipe. It’s perfect for lazy summer dinners, long outdoor tables, and twinkle lights at sunset.

4. This hat. A summer staple. I’ve had mine for years, but this one is similar.

5. And while we’re at it, this sunscreen. It has a touch of sunless tanner and plenty of SPF to keep us looking gorgeous, honey!

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