An Inconvenient Epiphany

 

 



When my son was new to the world, and I was new to motherhood, I had an inconvenient epiphany. Maybe it was the predawn solitude or the oxytocin. It could have been the sleep deprivation or the dizzying mix of joy and anxiety that had become my constant emotion. Maybe, when I breathed in that sweet milky baby breath, I inhaled knowledge. This person cradled against my neck, as tender as an apple blossom and as stubborn as a stain, was infinite and complete. Every particle of his being was already perfect and perfectly capable of being and becoming anything. He was kinetic and potential. If this was true of one baby person and every baby person then this was true of me as well. How had this simple truth escaped me before? How wonderful! How thrilling! How utterly inconvenient. There I was, barely capable of feeding and showering myself, confronted with the knowledge of my own infinite possibilities. I sat on my little red couch, my son drifting off to sleep and the sky just beginning to lighten outside the window, and wondered who I wanted to be when I grew up.