July 16

His head is in my lap, and I want so very badly to take it off. His tears and my sweat, there’s no difference now.. he is wailing, weeping, sobbing into me and we love to the tile floor for the sake of my sanity and body temperature. 

I breathe deep with my teeth clenched, and I lift my arms high in the air trying desperately to just be what he needs me to be in this moment. His transitionary overload has collided with mine. He keeps shoving his head onto my lap, again and again, his feet kicking the cold floor and I say nothing. Just hold him, and wait. I watch him sob and it’s déjà vu, flashback to exactly 20 years ago today— summer—

Me on the tile floor, wailing into my mamas  lap, her stroking my sweaty hair. I imagine what it was like to be her, 20 years ago — fresh to South America with no internet, phones or wifi. I wonder about her loneliness, her sanity.  I remember her disposition so clearly. 

Patient. And not the kind of patient people are in a line at a bank. No. The kind of patient your great grandma is when baking bread or listening to someone speak. 

She was collected. Nurturing. Respectful. 

I channel my inner Mama and I put my hand on my raging 3 year olds back. I don’t say anything, because that’s what my mama did. I know enough to know it’s not really the food or the way his brother looked at him or that his Nana hung up FaceTime before he did. I know enough to know it’s not the itchy bites or the a sense of his “pedal bike” or all his favorite books back home. 

I know it’s the deepest level of being uprooted from everything he’s ever known. I know it’s the loss of his favorite people, of everything predictable, of his whole world being absent. 

The adventure phase is over, and it’s time to hit the ground – crawling. 

He lays in my lap, sobbing, feet hitting tile floor and I listen. I listen to his cries and his breathing and I know we will get through these meltdowns because everyone does and I did, we just have to do it RIGHT. 

He finally breathes deep, settles. I pull him up into my arms, put my face right into his, the way his love language desires and I tell him 

I know, Buddy, I know. It sucks, I whisper. It sucks to lose everything we loved and no amount of toys or furniture will bring that back because it’s not the material items we’ve given up that make any difference. It’s our people. Our routines. Our family + our world as we knew it. 

I love you, I tell him, over and over again and he listens. 

And then he proceeds to blow his nose into my shirt and scampers off to the laundry room to find his mini sticks. It’s hard, this journey of deciding what to care about and what to let go of. It’s a constant battles deciding the snot in my shirt matter nothing, but the patterns of our soul matter .. everything. The power going out for the 8th time today means nothing but the way I respond to the slight inconvenience matters everything. The suitcases + the mess + the ants across the house matter nothing, but the trip to the river to refresh our family as a whole matters everything.