Two Miles and Fifteen Years. A Letter To My Son.

Dear Jonathan,
When you Google me in another fifteen years and realize with great relief that the porn star Laura Probert is not in fact your mom, I hope you will click off that page and move on to finding this essay. It won’t be as exciting as the porn but in a twisted sort of way, just as compelling.
I wouldn’t be able to tell this story if it weren’t for you. You changed my life forever.
Love,
Mom

Streams of thoughts fly through me as I make my way around the rocky trail I have run for over fifteen years. Today is your fifteenth birthday.

Two miles into the trail my uterus drops and a deep ache invades my pelvic floor. I would have ignored it and kept running a few years ago, only to spend the following hours on the toilet in pain. I stop quickly and sigh…two miles is all I have been able to comfortably run since your delivery.

After finding Tae Kwon Do almost ten years ago (something else I give you credit for) I don’t run much. The kick-ass substitute more than makes up for the high I used to get running. Today I give in quickly to the loud message my body sends when I try. Why have I decided to go for a run today? I wonder.

I run today because it’s a Thursday. Thursday is Tae Kwon Do night but I will miss class tonight because it’s your birthday. I run early this morning instead, proud to accomplish my workout – and grateful for the gift of remembering. The connection isn’t lost on me. My life is one on purpose moment after the next these days.

Half way through, winding around a tree and hurdling its roots, my eyes catch the eight foot wing span of a Pterodactyl (Great Blue Heron). I stare in awe and maneuver myself around the trees to get a few more seconds of those deep gray and dark blue feathers before he soars out of sight over the stream. What a gift, I think, and plan to look him up in my Animal Spirit Guides book when I get home. Sightings like this mean something, if you are paying attention.

The book says, “If great blue heron show up it means: Take some time for self-examination, reflecting on your goals, motivations, actions, feelings, strengths, and limiting beliefs. Only you know what’s best for you, so follow your inner wisdom and guidance rather than the dictates and pressures of others.” If I could teach this one gift to my children, it would be enough to consider my mission on earth accomplished.

Stopping on the last portion of the trail, smiling, I wipe the sweat dripping from under my hat with my sleeve. Sweating makes me smile, like it has forever. Having to stop, feeling my insides dropping out…that would have triggered several days of depression a while ago. A reminder of what I couldn’t do, a lost chunk of my worth.

I lay, head and shoulders propped up, in the white and blue hospital bed, an IV in my left elbow and a fetal heart monitor wrapped too tightly around my belly. It’s making red marks but when I adjust it I am scolded. Sweating and crying I say, “It’s too tight!” And adjust it again. There are way too many white and blue people standing around this bed. A too-tall male version leans into you, and me with his forearm and all his weight. Does he think he’ll pop my belly like a zit?

The other male version, not the woman I picked to deliver you, his feet braced on the table, width matching mine in the stirrups, puts a death grip on the too-large steel tongs that clamp down on your sweet little (way too big) head.

Please don’t rip my sweet little baby’s head off, I think, but can’t focus on you so much because the pain in my left side rips through my insides and out my back every time I try to move in that horrible bed. Then I throw up red popsicle and can’t be concerned that several strangers are staring at my vagina.

Dad and I have been in this room for more than eighteen hours and an emergency epidural. Daddy tries to follow orders from the nurse, “Get on her left side and hold that leg back!” She practically screams at him, his face pale with worry. I can feel he isn’t doing the job. I know he doesn’t want to hurt me. The nurse more than makes up for his lack on my right side, and I tear my quad muscle during the next push.

Walking up the hill back toward home I am startled back into my body by a car coming down the street. Shit, I am walking up the wrong side of the road. Breathing in the cool air and sighing out the fifteen year old memory I wonder what pieces still need healing, and how I will do it. You are doing it, I hear a voice say and think of the heron.

When I turn and look back at the bits of my life, the healing path I have walked is recognizable. It’s in me, I trust it, I don’t have to wonder anymore, so with another sigh I do the thing that pulls me back to the only place that matters…Now. Letting the memory fizzle with the breeze in one easy breath, I feel myself, sweaty and alive on the road. The little gravel pieces roll under my rubber soles and the fit of my DriFit shirt and favorite pants make me feel sexy. I smile with the magic that is my life and re-plan tonight’s birthday celebration, making my way back to the house with a moderately paced walk that makes my uterus happy again.

Everything leading to this moment was a gift. Even the third degree tears and prolapse.

Sitting on the cold bleachers at your first high school baseball game, my goofy smile must give away the intense pride busting from my face. I wonder, can you see me watching you? Can you feel the deep, impenetrable love pouring from my heart that began the day they slid your slippery little body onto my chest? Will you read this one day and wonder if you ruined my life? Or will you read this one day and know that you saved it?

Know the latter is my story. That I am grateful for everything about my life. Everything. Each piece pulls me toward something that only existed in my dreams fifteen years ago. After fifteen years and two miles, you continue to inspire me and make me believe that I can do and be anything I want. You inspire me to make it happen.

I hope somehow I’m doing the same for you. That my love shines bright enough to give you the same gift you have given me. That you will be inspired to live a life of your dreams.

Happy Birthday Buddy. I love you more than the moon and the stars.