Bruises.

If I could show you how this all feels, days and weeks, months, a year out from the beginning of this strange life, I suppose it might look like a bruise. 

I've seen plenty as a mom and a nurse. Assessed cases of road rash and broken bones, surgical incisions and blisters. I've dressed wounds, packed fistulas and watched ulcers heal from the inside out. They are all gory things to me still, bloody and granulated, crusty and scabbed. Even the casted or stitched ones are sad, the pain so acute and necessary. 

It's this pain I watch and treat. My little girls trip as they run in the yard, tip over on a bike with training wheels removed. I try to stand still as they pick themselves up, wait it out as they take the first breath and feel the force of the injury. So far, they've been so lucky, nothing broken. I've tried to be the mom that holds back on the band-aids, letting them ask if they are needed while knowing that most of the time, they are not. Most of the time, the pain brushes off. 

I know that skinned knees and elbows heal with air to dry them out. Tears fall briefly before the jokes come, before the smile returns after the fear and shock of the fall wears off. Each night in the tub, we wash the day's dirt away, tiny bubbles easing off the grit from their fingernails, flowers and pink fragrancing the air as we wash worm guts from their hair. In the aftermath, the after-bath, we dry off shiny skin and see the colors left behind. Rosy cheeks and sun-kissed noses make way to tanned shoulders and clean hands. Painted toes ease into bony ankles and muscled little calves, pale and peach and perfect. The shins are always the sticking point, the space where our towels rub gently over mottled skin. There isn't a day that goes by that the deepest of purple isn't seen on one or two of those little legs. Various lumps and bumps and variegated hues of a bruise are quite the norm for small children.

What then of us adults? Speaking for myself, I'm covered in bruises, all in different stages of healing. 

Numb to physical pain as my heart is crushed by the weight of grief
in meeting Griffin the first time.

I am poking old wounds, seeing the colors I thought would be gone by now still lingering, pale under my thin skin, seeping circles of yellows and green, lily-livered patches I have not wanted to touch in ages for knowing that poking them will still hurt.

Hope dashed, meeting Henry for the first time
as he comes back to the land of the living at more than 3 days old. 

It was easy to ignore the pain in the beginning of new life, the busyness of learning a new love and caring for a full family overwhelming the feelings of the physical healing. Two months out, scars turning again to thin lines and white, the time is coming to brave the difficulties that come with exploring every injury and insult.

Months out from trauma, over a year since death rocked us,
still reeling and feeling the deep-seated, long healing bruises.

When I towel off the girls, wiping the grime away, I steer clear of all their sore spots. I can't say I plan to wallow myself, but while I have the time and energy, while the memories are still raw, while the colors are slowly fading, now is the best time to prod and poke, to forgo being sensible and stop avoiding the hurt.


          If you enjoyed this post, read :Battle Scars