Pie for Breakfast

I used to watch my mom slice piles of ripe, juicy peaches for a cobbler; buttery biscuits skimmed the top of the fruit in craggy, golden mounds. A blueberry pie was carefully pulled from the oven, the violet-hued juices escaping the small slits in the top crust. After dessert, my brother and sister and I would run around the front yard in the fading twilight, trapping fireflies in jars until it was too dark to see where we stepped. Later, my sister and I whispered together in bed until we fell asleep. I recall feeling truly content in those moments. No one ever warned me that motherhood would be so simultaneously fulfilling and painful, that the extraordinary pull of my emotions would physically hurt at times. I know now that my mom must have struggled with the same frustrations, although she never voiced these feelings to me when I was a child. As an adult, I often feel inept in my attempt to retain a singular sense of self as a person and as a woman, while striving to succeed in my role as a mother. And yet, I've learned that the two are inextricably intertwined.

I used to wonder if carving out time to focus on my own needs was selfish or, conversely, if that time would seem easier to obtain as my daughters became older and more self-reliant. Often, after the girls have gone to bed and I've cleaned up the kitchen, I lie in the darkness and take a deep breath, then let it out slowly. There is no end to this constant worry, this terrifying love for my children that is all at once wonderful and exhausting and exhilarating. It exists alongside my depression and anxiety, which I try to conceal from them. I want assurance that my daughters will understand, as they mature, how unequivocal my love is and that nothing they do or say to hurt me will ever change that fact. I wonder if my own mom experienced these same feelings about my siblings and me and I wonder if she still thinks about the thread of depression that runs through our family and how it impacted us through the years. I look out the window at the silhouettes of the trees being teased slightly by the humid night breeze and, after a moment, close my eyes. 

The next morning, I dollop a mound of barely sweetened whipped cream onto a cold piece of pie and eat it for breakfast before anyone else wakes up. Standing alone in the quiet kitchen, I feel suspended in a sort of meditative, renewed calm. I watch as the sun begins to stream through the window, and its sudden warmth brings tears to my eyes. I gently place my plate and fork beside the sink and force myself to breathe in and out. Then repeat. Again. And again, until my breaths come effortlessly once more.