My belly hangs like a ripe fig now.

My belly hangs like a ripe fig now, the same distended belly I have seen in other mothers, mother women at my synagogue, mother cats long after the litter is gone, mother dogs with their dugs almost dragging.  I finally have official permission to exercise after a long string of tests for my pains, and I plan out planking and crunches, pluck hairs for the first time, and wonder if starting to wear make-up at my right age might improve my credibility as a speaker and advocate... and at the same time wonder what it would be to love this fig-body the way I love figs, why I would ever want to erase the evidence of my maternity.

This is, after all, what I was born to do-- not all that I was born to do, but a proud and primal part.  There are generations on generations of mammalian mother love written in the figgy flop of my body.

I am stronger again, on this wild see-saw.  This winter I lost my breath, and with it, my ability to carry a child who loved the world from my arms.  The steroids forced us to finish weaning. I have come to realize that profoundly changed our relationship because the nightly nursing was the only time my son could count on me to stop doing and simply be with him.  Now months later I am strong enough and stable enough for him to ask to be carried just to be closer to me.  How long before the curve of my strength and the curve of his weight cross lines and part us again?  Up and down, closer and farther, growing up and growing old all the time.