Don't worry, they're safe and loved there too

Sunday morning. Sun’s up, me too. I’ve always been an early riser, leaving warm bed and bodies behind as I investigate what has begun. Setting moon or rising sun, ocean, meadow, mountain, town—all are newly birthed, unexplored, and ancient at this time of day.

Even as girl I left the quiet house before the others and returned to bed and blankets before school. It’s a habit that was only interrupted when I became a mother.

Sure, in the early days, I could zip him—or even them—into fleece and down. Tucked inside my parka, or snuggled into sheepskin, they greeted the day with me. The folks at the Bagel Café, which opened at 6:30 am, knew us. Primo and I wondered why the newspaper deliveryman wore a bicycle helmet at 7—the owls were attacking his head, he explained.

But at a certain point it became too fraught with logistics—what with school and work and homework and a nutritional breakfast and lunches to be made—and that ritual became hit and miss, very much missed.

So today, this gorgeous Sunday in mid June offers early dawn and alpenglow, and I am free to venture out. Just walking to the swimming pool is a sensual feast. Cottonwoods and silverberry exude wild perfume as they welcome spring. Rising sun dispels morning chill and highlights the billion year old rock dramatically upthrust at my periphery. Closer at hand a hummingbird finds food fast at an oleaster thicket, and plain old mallards dabble for breakfast in the muck at the bottom of the stream.

Why am I free to wander this morning, inspired by daybreak and Mary Oliver and rocket fueled by two shots of espresso?

Where are my children, those boys whose birth so transformed my life and made a mother out of me? An attentive, stay-by-their sides, sleep-in-the-den with them, carry-them-everywhere, rarely-be-apart-from-them type of mother?

They are at their other house, the house where they spend fifty percent of their life, the life they live with their bio dad and his wife, their other life—the one that doesn’t include me.

Oh, but don’t worry. They’re safe and loved there too. We four adults are mature and appropriate co-parents. We communicate and work together in the best interests of our shared children. We’ve been living this way since the youngest was one, and he’s seven now.

So we’re all used to it.

Right now I know they are warm in their bunk, Primo on top and Secundo on the bottom. I’ve been in their room; it’s sunny and hung with red curtains. Their bookshelf is stuffed full of Sandra Boynton and Curious George and other kid classics. There’s a kite hanging from the ceiling and a growth chart and bins of Lego and more than a few stray socks on the carpet.

When they wake up, they’ll put on their cozy bathrobes, tie the sashes around their waists and trundle downstairs for homemade waffles—while I have all the time in the world to do as I please.

No clamouring voices, no requests for help with the knife, no pleas for extra syrup, no sticky fingers on my skin, no spilled milk, no recounting of dreams, telling of bad jokes, or wiping of dirty faces.

I have all the head space I could possible need. I awoke when I wanted, lay with my warm husband, and now, nose up, I head out into an uncharted day.

I know many mothers would kill for the free moments I get. They tell me this often. Family life is so busy, parenting—especially in the early years—so demanding that relationships, both with self and the partner, suffer.

Just last night Andy and I made love in the living room, In front of a fire, and then we ate cake and I may have even had a scoop of ice cream. Or was it a square of dark chocolate? Did we really pass a sip of tequila from tongue to tongue?

My mom’s so happy that I’m happy with Andy, whom I met in the era before children, the knight and shining armour who searched the world to find me as soon as he heard the other guy and I had split up, and played Coldplay for me, promising to fix me.

Handy Andy, he can fix anything. “Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity,”

he quotes Eminem, “to seize everything you ever wanted  in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip?”

This morning I am capturing it, seizing the day with both hands, open hearted and vulnerable, present and available. I am right here.

Right here, in the pool, in water as blue as the Mar Carribe—in which I used to swim way back when I was not yet a mother and still roamed the world at will, one morning at a time, accumulating adventures, evolving, becoming the person that I became in order to become the woman that I am.

Sun pierces liquid and the moving medium strobes with prisms as I hang suspended, holding my breath, sobbing underwater.