Orbit

We were never one person.  We were always only two people, one inside the other.  In those pregnant months it felt like we were one, but of course they each had their own hearts, and after a few weeks, their own little budding kidneys, a little wee stomach, liver, a tiny electric brain – all the important pieces and parts, tucked beneath tiny jewel-box ribcage, and all of it wrapped in a pillow of fluid beneath my own shielding ribs and beating heart, which itself grew beneath my own mother’s heart, and her in her mother’s heart, and so on.  My body did the work of cleaning and oxygenating their blood, feeding them, and their bodies did the work of growing, differentiating, expanding and expanding and expanding until they filled every available space, until at any moment I could burst.

Then they were born and the physical link between our two bodies was cut by their father (I think, I never even saw that, not any of the three times), but there it was for a while – it still is for Craig – a ghostly umbilical cord, a link that pulls him to me and me to him, even when I’m writing a brief, preparing for a pre-trial conference, reviewing document after document after document, a little trickle of my consciousness bleeds off and down a tractor beam path straight toward wherever he is, whatever he’s doing right now.

I am the sun – and so, within a few days, having earned through the work of parenting the place that I inherited by virtue of biology, is their father.  Dense with the impossible burden of responsibility for them, our gravitational pull keeps them close to us both, within inches, separate from us but just barely.  I come home and they run to me, drawn to me.

Their limbs lengthen.  The orbital path elongates, an oval – sometimes they fly far away and sometimes they circle back close for a bit, but we stay the center of the circle for now.  But our responsibilities begin to evaporate, bit by tiny bit, and condense on them.  You can dress yourself.  Please get yourself a drink and snack.  When Max is mean to you, what do you think you should do?  You do your own homework, dear, I’m not taking a math class this week.    They get denser, accretion eventually making them heavier, fuller, more solid.  Not yet – today they are still light as air, celestial bodies flitting around us, comets moving at impossible speed, while their father and I, heavy and slow, look at them in wonder and envy.  Wish I could bottle that up and sell it!  Where do they get their energy??  Youth is wasted on the young!

I see now the time will come when they become the sun, and I the planet – for a while, we will orbit around each other, but then later they’ll be so heavy with responsibility, and I meanwhile will become lighter and lighter and lighter. . .  It’s a matter of physics, really. The denser body has the stronger gravitational pull.  I’ll fly around them, at first in an orbit so wide I won’t even notice that we have switched roles.

We have other things, important things – I have my work and my reading and my cooking and my running and one day, perhaps, I will again have gardening and piano and lazy days sewing, luxurious quiet, three measly seconds to think without interruption.  They have their things, already developing so many relationships and interests and daily interactions that I know nothing about (and shouldn’t).

It’s thrilling when their orbital path flings them far away and I watch them out there, being themselves, disconnected from me and doing it well, flying solo in the wide cold reaches of space, out of my realm of influence and seriously killing it with awesomeness.

And how soothing, those blessed, precious, still-very-frequent moments when they are drawn closer to me.  Piled together on the floor for bedtime for stories, the two big boys spilling out of my lap but still trying to be in it, and me trying to hold them in it.  Nestled beneath  my heart once more, if just for a minute or two.  My loves, my little planetary bodies.  Watching them fly ever farther away from me has been the greatest privilege of my life.