Lost Highway

If you’ve ever looked back over the photos in your phone and realized that you have no recollection of a certain moment that was captured on film, you know it’s an odd sensation.  For me, that used to happen when I had a little too much fun out one night, and there was great sport in trying to recollect what precipitated a certain image.  Good times, lots of drinks, some weird dudes.

But I found this picture on my dad’s phone tonight over dinner.  It was innocent.  I was trying to find a good shot to make his wallpaper on the iPhone I got him for Christmas last year.  I have no memory of this moment.  My first real interaction with Oscar.  Gone.  Or as it if never happened.  And the strangest thing is how I remember sitting at Oscar’s bedside, nursing or pumping or whatever thing I was doing at the time and hearing some woman talk nonsense about this or that.  I would draw the curtain and see a stretcher with a woman on it.  It was plain that she was medicated, and that she was trying to process all that was happening to the birth she had imagined through her babbling.  I even asked Amerissa if I had such a visit with Oscar and she assured me I had.  But I didn’t remember it.

And now there’s proof.  And it made me cry tonight.  Tonight as I was holding it all together.  ALL day I did.  I started with half a yoga class (all I could squeeze in before O’s feed at 9:30), soccer, more soccer, a family visit from Fran and Lori, the pumpkin patch, my dad’s visit, pumpkin carving.  All of it.  I wore a smile.  But when I happened upon these photos I ran out of juice.  I am out of juice.  I can’t really believe this is happening, or has happened.  Why?  Why this baby?  Hasn’t he proven his strength enough?  Haven’t I?  Surely some awful thing I did caused this. Some moment of maternal incompetence.

There will be a day where this doesn’t matter.  But I am glad that I am writing this down to demarcate its absence.  The loss of the moment.  The loss.  It will fade into oblivion once Oscar is plastic sword fighting his brothers and I am yelling at him to take it outside or downstairs.  OUTSIDE OR DOWNSTAIRS!  But now its the loss.  I would do anything to make Oscar whole.  More whole.  He’s perfect.  But you know what I mean. 40 weeks whole.  Big fat healthy no hernia having whole.  And I want my moment back.

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