Threads
No one told me it would be this hard.
No one told me that.
No one told me that being pregnant would change my very cells*. That part of me would be transformed forever. No one told me that when I gave birth to a son we would always be connected.
The truth is that as two became four and four became eight and cells kept dividing over and over, the human being woven together finally emerged and left some of that potent thread inside of me.
The connection that started inside of me continued to take shape. The shuttle moved over and under and the weave got prettier and more complicated each and every day.
So many moments in time have entwined within this weaving. The thread for the day you were born is a stunning yellow so bright that it is white inside. It makes me blink just thinking of it. The first day we realized that you were failing to thrive is one long, thin, thread, the color of jaundice. The incredible smile you gave me a year or so later on Nana and Papu’s lawn, is the lush color of sweet violets. Those quiet nights when I sat on the edge of the bed listening to your inquisitive curiosity, are threads the color of indigo, sprinkled with stars. The first day of pre-school, when your dad and I sobbed uncontrollably after walking out of the door are a sad and anemic blue. The first day of first grade adds bright green for your incredible energy and vibrant enthusiasm. The day you lost your Nana, adds pastels to the cloth but the colors are hard to see sometimes so they look gray. But that beautiful day you caught a salmon with your dad, those threads are impossibly bright, shiny orange. There is a fuzzy, twisted rainbow yarn, that fades in places, disappears and returns. And thread for the day you graduated high school in the middle of a pandemic is a bright and powerful red.
There are so many moments. So many threads have been woven together to make this life. They have bound us together for all these many years. We have been breathing the same air, singing the same songs, eating the same food, loving the same people. Each laugh, sigh, scream, slam, tear and hug added another inch to this blanket that has grown to kept me warm, give me hope, and sometimes lift me right out of the darkness.
No one told me to expect any of that. That I would feel a connection in my soul so deep that I could lose myself in it.
I see this beautiful blanket in my head that our lives have woven, and I look closely. There are little frayed edges here and there. A tiny pull that happened the first time you dropped my hand and walked across the living room to your dad, a little fray when you slept over a friend’s house for the first time, and an M&M sized hole in the middle that appeared after your first time in the driver’s seat, alone.
As a mom, your independence was my goal. But for independence to happen, the unraveling of the weave had to start as soon as the cloth was woven. It didn’t seem fair, but I knew it was happening. I should have expected how this would feel. But I didn’t.
Today, I felt that thread, from that cloth, tug a bit. That thread was luscious reddish-brown, and connected to each of our hearts. And when I watched you walk away today, for the first time, for real, that thread pulled further and further. The weave loosened up, and with every step you took, the yarn pulled and pulled until you reached that door in the courtyard.
Between us was that reddish-brown thread and so many others wound around each other in that beautiful pattern that we all wove together in this life. As much as I wanted to figure out another solution, I knew that there was only way for you to get through that door. I had to tug on that thread, pull at it, fully rip it off to leave a raw and dangling end that you can use to start weaving your own beautiful, thick, blanket.
*Cells and DNA from a male fetus can live on in the mother for decades, for more information google: fetal microchimerism
