A Day of Answers

The first time I type the word “postpartum” into my phone it autocorrects to “postmortem.”

“You should do something for yourself,” says my husband. “Go for a run, I can watch the girls.” 

“I can’t run while I’m pregnant,” I tell him, and he knows that. He’s just trying to help. 

Running is the only thing I do for myself. The only thing. It’s not ideal; I wish I could take baths or spend an hour curled up with a good book and a glass of wine and feel the same sense of mental clarity I get from a run but for whatever reason, it doesn’t work that way. Not to mention those scenarios rarely come to fruition in real life; my girls want to hop in the tub with me or they have generously painted dragon pictures on the pages of my book. When my husband takes all three children out of the house to leave me completely alone, I spend the hour of free time answering emails or doing dishes because even though these aren’t things I do for myself they are things that need doing and it’s easier to do them without a constant threat of interruption. 

Throughout my pregnancy I go for the occassional uncomfortable walk but it’s not the same. I crave the run, crave a path or a trail where I can breathe in the wheat fields and wave to long-lashed cows and with each step every problematic thought stacks itself up at the forefront of my mind. One at a time each issue is addressed, their specific solutions revealing themselves like leaves floating up through a murky puddle. A scheduling conflict, solved. A plothole in my recent novel, filled and patched. A snide comment from an Instagram stranger thrown onto the dirt beneath my feet, never to be heard from again. 

But I cannot run, so my mind stays murky. I cannot find the leaves.  

In mid-December, I give birth to a beautiful baby boy. The delivery goes well and by the end of February and I am ready to run again. My 4 year old holds hands with my 3 year old as we cross the gym parking lot. I carry my 8 week old baby in his carseat and shoulder my gym bag. An older man holds the door for us and the front desk woman waves hello. She hasn’t seen me in almost a year. 

We make small talk while I add my son to our family plan. The girls skip into the gym daycare searching for Nicole, who they’ve always called “Taco” since they couldn’t pronounce her name correctly when they were younger. But Taco is not there. “Does she have the day off?” I ask, and the woman behind the desk shakes her head and tells us Taco moved to Colorado. 

A very young woman gives us a friendly smile. The girls are not thrilled with the new person. “We’ll come get you if there are any issues,” she says and takes my baby. He is so tiny in his carseat.

Since I am at the beck and call of the gym daycare lady and can’t run outside I choose the treadmill closest to the front desk. No need to do too much, I tell myself. I haven’t been on a run since before I was pregnant and even though I have the all-clear from the doctor, 8 weeks after having a baby is still absurdly soon to take up running again. Don’t push it, I think as I step on the belt and hook my headphones over my ears. Nice and easy, I remind myself as I nudge the speed up to a slight jog. No need to prove anything. 

But when the first song of my playlist kicks on, my heart soars. I nudge the speed even faster and sing along and bob my head as I’ve always done and without warning my phone pops out of it’s little holder and bounds down the belt. Whatever coordination I think I have is no longer there; no hops, skips or clever feats of agility. Instead, there are loud clunks and shrill squeaks and a slow, sloppy tumble where every limb collides with every other limb and I finally hit the belt and shoot out the back like a cartoon coyote. 

I sit, in disbelief as every resolution-faithful gym goer pauses their workout and comes to check on me. 

“Oh my god.” 

“Are you okay?” 

“Oh my god.” 

“I’m fine,” I insist as I gather my things: phone, headphones, long sleeve t-shirt I had draped over the railing. I check out a few scuffs that will likely turn into impressive raspberries within a few hours and I smile and laugh because I’m definitely, most certainly not crying. I feel a hand on my knee and when I glance up I find a gym employee in a collared shirt. 

“Are you alright?” she asks. “That was really something.” I tell her I’m good to go and she breathes a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God. Because your baby is crying.” 

Right. Inside the daycare, my baby is indeed screaming. “I need to feed him,” I tell the woman, and she points to a beanbag in the corner. I lift up my sports bra and give him a breast and a little girl stands a few feet in front of me and stares at the both of us. “Maddison, stop that,” says the gym lady but the little girl doesn’t go anywhere. My body is bruised and sticky and it is impossible to feed my squirming son while sitting in a beanbag and breastmilk leaks through my sports bra and drenches us both. I load him back into his carseat and figure I’ll try this whole running thing again another day. 

Two weeks later, we are on full lockdown from COVID.

“This will all be under control soon,” says my husband, knowing the gym is my only source of consistent, affordable childcare, but two weeks after that my gym closes permanently. The girls ask if Taco will be there next time.

“We’ll figure it out,” says my husband, my love, my rock, my bucket.

But the pandemic isn’t under control soon and March turns into April and the days melt together and smoke fills the summer sky and my thoughts stack up, each one thicker and rougher than the last. I think of how many people have died in the pandemic. I think of helicopter crashes and fathers and daughters. Of fathers who leave daughters behind and soon it’s May and a man named George Floyd has been murdered. He had a daughter too.

He also called for his Mama. I look at my son, my baby boy, his squishy cheeks and sleep-smile lips snuggled into me and I think, what if, at 14 years old, every child had a choice of the skin color they would wear the rest of their lives? What if the options were laid out before them: white, tan, brown, black…what if they were all mixed into a hat and picked out at random? As a parent, with an ever-present fear of everything that could potentially harm my child, would I leave Black out of the hat? 

Parents always do that, leave off the riskiest options in an effort to protect their children. “Do you want to go to college or work at your uncle’s tire shop?” a mother asks. “What’s wrong with the military?” asks her son. “Nothing is wrong with the military,” says the mother, leaving out the part that people have guns and may shoot her child. 

“What’s wrong with Black?” my son would ask. “Nothing is wrong with Black,” I’d say, leaving out the part that people have guns and may shoot my child. 

When my son is 9 months old I take him to his 9 month appointment. “How is everything going?” asks my doctor. I tell her everything is going great, but he is having trouble sleeping. She asks what kind of sleep methods we’ve tried and how long he cries in his crib before we retrieve him. I tell her he never cries more than a few seconds because a man died this year while calling for his mother, and another died in a helicopter crash while holding his daughter and another died alone in a hospital while his daughter said her final goodbyes over a zoom call.

She puts her clipboard on the desk. “Have you done anything for yourself, lately?” she asks. I tell her I bought some flowers at Costco a few months back but they are dead now too and I can’t bring myself to throw them out. 

“Maybe we should talk about postpartum depression,” she says. 

“You mean postmortem depression,” I say, because that’s what I really have. I’m depressed because people keep dying. I can’t tell if she understands. Her face is behind a mask. 

By the time I’m in the parking lot my son is already asleep. When I load him up into the back seat of our car I notice a 3^rd row of seats. Why don’t we ever use the 3^rd row, I wonder. We really should use the third row. In the front seat I can’t find my keys. I have a set of keys in my pocket, but it’s only the house key, not the car key. Where is the car key? I look through the center console, the cup holders. I shove papers off the passenger seat, search down by my feet. My car key is nowhere to be found and why does it smell like cigarettes? 

This is not my car. 

I unload my son, grab his diaper bag and close all the doors. Our car is parked right next to this one, a vaguely similar shape and color, with a push start. I load up my son and call my husband on the way home to tell him I spent 20 minutes in the wrong car. We laugh and laugh and when he asks how the appointment went I tell him it went great and we need a 3^rd row of seats. 

My mom takes the girls on a Wednesday, “You should do something for yourself,” she says, “Go for a run,” and I tell her I will, but then my husband finds a lump on our dog’s belly. The soonest the vet can see us is November 3^rd. “That’s Election Day,” I whisper on the phone, because the date is kismet. I have nothing but questions and Election Day is a day of answers. While we learn the fate of our country can you also tell me if my dog has cancer? She tells me to drop our dog off in the morning of Election Day and they’ll call us in the afternoon with results. A couple weeks later I find a lump on my cat’s neck. What about him, does he have cancer? The woman adds him to the appointment.

While I’m waiting for November 3^rd I find a website that keeps track of how many people voted early in the election. I refresh it incessantly. “You should go for a run,” says my husband, and I tell him I will, but not right now. I refresh the page, think of people getting kicked out of their apartments. Refresh the page, think of helicopter crashes. Refresh the page, think of ventilators and children in cages. My children are here with me now and I need to hug them, hug my pets, hug my husband and my mother and my brother who lives in Utah, wrap all of them in a warm cushion and keep them here, with me, safe, safe, safe, safe. 

I refresh the page and it is November 3^rd. 

Results are here, but just barely. Wisconsin is blue, Montana is red. My dog’s lump is an innocuous fatty tumor and his blood work is perfect. Texas is red, the jury is still out on Arizona. My cat’s lump is a completely harmless, under-the-skin mole. Pennsylvania is blue. Nevada is blue. My baby boy giggles and my girls build a fort in their bedroom. People dance to YMCA in the streets and write love songs about Georgia and there is no longer a page to refresh.

The water is murky but there are leaves within it, I can feel them, swirling, waiting to appear. 

For the first time in almost two years, I tell my husband I am going for a run. 

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