My Pride

At night my pride curls around me like it is winter, even in May. My daughter holds my arm with both of her hands and nuzzles her nose into my shoulder.  I put a hand on my middle son's shoulder and he falls asleep quickly. My baby boy shapes his entire being around mine. A head on the shoulder. A hand on the ribcage. A leg draped across my belly. By morning time it is hard to tell where one of us begins and one of us ends.

When my husband killed himself, we shattered into separate pieces. 

Maybe it was mostly me that shattered. 

My daughter cried for one day. 

My middle son was silent. 

My baby boy did not know what had happened. 

I knew, though. 

All the responsibilities of two parents immediately shifted to me. 

They were mine now. Just mine. 

I saw three mouths to feed.

I saw three growing bodies to carry, to clothe, to guard.

I saw their needs. 

All of their needs.

I saw their lives. 

All of their lives.

And I was terrified.

In the days 

and weeks

and months

following the hanging body, 

the cremation, 

the burial,

even when I comforted my children,

I was separate from them.

My hugs were distant.

I mean, I couldn't even feel my arms.

I went through the paces.

I made breakfast,

I bathed them,

I packed lunches,

I brought them to school,

I picked them up,

I fed them dinner,

I put them to sleep.

Being a mother was a schedule.

Pieces of a day.

A grid.

A to-do list.

Separate items, slightly organized.

Then I went searching.
I traveled over boundaries and borders,
looked in counties and corners,
down dirt roads until I discovered this. 

I discovered this. 

I found a job I didn't think I deserved but somehow won,

and a home with a brook in the backyard,

with a library down the street,

with a corner store where everyone knows one another by first name,

with a school that has a sugar house for making syrup.

I picked up all of our pieces.

I put some of them in cardboard boxes and labeled them with permanent marker. 

I threw many pieces out.

I donated some to a daycare.

I sold some that were too heavy to move, in order to buy others that were lighter.

I put my children in our van, 

buckled them in,
packed them in tightly,
surrounded them with the small miscellany of our lives,

the things the big trucks had forgotten,

and I moved us.

And when we arrived, I looked at my children,

And I saw my children in our new space,

And I said this is our new home.

So at night now, in this new place, where the stars are so bright in the sky and the air smells like trees even in the dead of winter and there are hardly any cars passing under the bedroom window, my pride pulls in close around me. All our pieces come together as we fall asleep. By morning time, it is hard to tell where one of us begins and one of us ends. My pride is one body with four sleeping breaths, finding each other's cadence, like a chorus, synchronized.