6

6

T he sun angles in through the nursery's window, dust dancing in its rays.

Flora sits in the rocking chair with Iris asleep in her arms. She watches as her daughter's beautifully long eyelashes flutter in slumber and her lips occasionally mimic a sucking motion, as if she has a pacifier in her mouth. Flora carefully reaches for her phone and discreetly takes a video of the sleeping baby for Connor. She hates that he is missing these moments.

She almost laughs when she realizes that just twenty minutes ago, Iris was screaming, resisting sleep, and driving Flora to her wits' end. And now, merely looking at her daughter melts Flora into a gooey mess. She is learning that parenthood means existing as a sine wave in constant oscillation.

this child is perfect

Flora admires the jet-black tuft of hair, the dip beneath her nose that leads to the top of her lip, the outline of her sweet chin. Her eyelids are still a purplish red, something the nurses said would subside with time. And even the blister on her upper lip, a result of nursing, makes Flora swoon. It is difficult to fathom that just a few weeks ago, this creature was inside her. Not only difficult, in fact, but nearly impossible.

Flora cries. The tears come suddenly, and she watches as Iris moves up and down with the sobs. This baby is so vulnerable now. When she was inside, Flora could protect her. Now, she is completely exposed. A hostage to her environment.

Flora feels simultaneously helpless and omnipotent. Both make her equally uncomfortable. In one sense, without the safety of her womb, she cannot control what happens to her baby. In the other sense, her baby is completely dependent on her. Flora could do anything to this tiny human, who cannot fight back.

Bile burns her throat.

Iris's breath skips, and Flora's attention returns to the puffy lips and soft cheeks. Flora has the acute sensation that she did not exist until this very moment.

"We'd love to plan another trip," her dad says on the phone. "Maybe once Connor is back. How long is that now?"

"A little over two weeks," Flora replies casually, as if she isn't keeping track down to the hour.

"That's soon!" he says, and Flora verbally agrees but inwardly deflates. Two weeks might as well be two decades.

She stands at the kitchen counter just beside the refrigerator, picking at a large brick of white cheddar cheese. When she couldn't find any crackers, she opted instead for some pretzels from the back of the pantry that she now realizes are very stale. But she eats them anyway.

"How's it all going?" her dad asks. "Are you ‘sleeping when the baby sleeps' and all that?"

The question fires her up with rage, but the logical part of her knows it shouldn't. A wall of misunderstanding stands between them; her father is a product of his generation. He probably didn't change a single diaper when Flora was a baby and, thus, has no frame of reference for her current situation.

So, instead, she just says: "Yeah. And all that. "

Flora realizes that her mom's experience as a new mother might not have been so different from her own. Her husband wasn't deployed, sure, but he also wasn't hands-on. Having a partner who is there but not really there must breed its own kind of loneliness.

Her dad changes the subject to an article he read recently in a psychology journal about growth mindset versus fixed mindset. She finds herself mesmerized by his voice, the cadence a lullaby. Hearing adult words out loud has a soothing effect on her mind, though she isn't actually comprehending anything he says. Normally, conversations with her father are filled with lively debate and scientific back-and-forth, but her brain at this moment is sticky. Slow.

She takes another bite of stale pretzel,

where are those rice crackers Esther bought and follows it up with a too-large chunk of cheddar. Her mouth chews with great effort, mimicking the gunk in the gears of her brain.

Her dad hasn't noticed her silence. Or maybe he has and doesn't know what to do with it. He says, "I'll send you the article. You can let me know what you think."

"Cool, yeah, that'd be great, Dad. Thanks."

She stands by the fridge for a long time after they hang up. Or maybe not such a long time; she's not really sure. Outside the window above the sink, she can see the backyard, where the tree line at the edge of their property glows. Every night, as the sun approaches a particular angle, the trees shine gold for a few magic moments.

Maybe she'll have a glass of wine on the porch. She could bring a blanket in case of an autumn chill and watch as the stars appear one by one. Before Iris, she loved spending time out there. The house is in a heavily wooded area of Vermont, and the world within the trees sings its own tune at night after the sun goes to bed. She used to love this time of day.

Now, though, it fills her with dread.

It's right around this time each evening that she hits her lowest point. Maybe it's a hormone dip. Maybe it's the notion of staring into the abyss of the never-ending night, when she will get very little sleep and will have to pry herself from her warm duvet to feed Iris. Each successive feed/pump session gets harder, the four-o'clock one being the most difficult. By then, she is so exhausted that she has to pinch her thighs to keep herself awake as the machine, immune to the time of day, plugs away as normal.

She won't go outside to have a glass of wine. If she actually gets a spare moment, she'll fold the laundry. Or empty the dishwasher. Or wash the pump parts. Or open the new pack of bibs. Or fix that clicking noise in the swing. Or

these pretzels are disgusting

Flora throws them in the trash. She then washes her hands, careful around the dry patch on her knuckles that has now expanded into a scaly lesion, and opens the fridge to replace the cheese back in its drawer.

There, neatly stowed beside the milk on the top shelf, is the box of crackers.