GROWING PAINS

"Some periods of our growth are so confusing

that we don't even recognize that growth is happening...

Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting,

holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be,

eventually become the periods we wait for,

for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared

for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability,

a new level of the personality is about to be revealed."

- 'Living by the Word: Selected Writings 1973-1987'

by Alice Walker

I've got growing pains. Silence and growing pains.

Or I brace myself with that's what I've got because it agrees so altogether

with the words of one of my household gods, Alice Walker. 

I think it like a prayer, that this time that feels so confusing

in effect is a time of growth disguised. Please let it be so.

It is his little body growing suddenly so fast it feels like we

should be able to hear it, but for him, everything is barefaced yet. 

It is me who aches and have one thousand and one nights of questions.

It is me who folds corners in one book after the other about being a

mother and craving to write, and every other one about being a

woman and taking up space. The late evenings are mine.

And the words. The words of the others. And those within that

swell me so, but refuses to come to the surface so

that I can look them in the eye.

One morning when we lay slumbery and study each other he says I

smell like butterfly milk. I write that down a bit later in a 'Cassius Says' notebook,

mark the date next to it. I think to myself then that I've become too much library

and too little poetry, too much laundry basket and too little nudity,

too much stain remover and too little dance moves.

Then I think I'm always so quick to be hard on myself.

And I think that I know this place and I've been here before, only at

another age. Been in growth or in waiting at least,

and instead felt like if utterly lost.

This is a reminder that even if I am uncertain of the future I'll want to be

more poetry (it'll have to be whatever it is) and nude more often.

There's a generous mirror that was left to hang in this flat from the

previous inhabitant. Every now and then when I'm home alone I drag

Cassius's clothes rail away from in front of it, let my dressing gown fall

to the floor and stand there naked, downright and without demeanour.

I can think to myself then, nowadays, that it is beautiful how it

has changed. The belly that has a softer roundness after carrying him,

the breasts that have more density in their drops, my shoulders and

the collarbone that bridge them that's always been strong.  

I push them back then and stand straight. In the light.

And I can think to myself now when I put this into words, that

right there is something that has come to the surface to look me in the eye.

That the writer, the woman, and the lover in me doesn't have to

be dormant in the mother's shadow. I am right here.

∞

kids malawi chair from this beautiful place
linen shell pillow by tamar mogendorff
large muslin swaddle from bonét et bonét
| selfportrait |
cassius is wearing linen trousers from mingo kids
toy furniture for pretend friends by stuül