As I drove toward the city for my last day of work, I saw a Biff flying through the sky. A crane had lifted it from a construction zone alongside the highway, and I bent low over the steering wheel to see the portable toilet on its airborne journey. It felt like an omen. But of what?
Earlier that morning, I was walking my dog with my five-month-old son in his stroller when a woman with her own young son struck up a conversation with me. She was the first mom-friend I’d made in the wild, and that felt like a sign, too.
That day was my last day working as an adjunct instructor of writing for the foreseeable future. My husband and I had visited daycare, crunched the numbers, soul-searched and made pro-and-con lists. It made the most sense, we decided, that I stay home with our son and use the tiny pockets of time I got to work on my own writing instead of spending more time grading a paper than it had taken its author to whip together. It also felt right. Deep, deep down. But when I thought about driving off campus for the last time for a while, I got that anxious feeling––you know, the one where your stomach feels like it’s pitched up a bit in your torso, as though you’re at the highest point of a rollercoaster that has just tipped itself over the edge.
So, making a mom-friend and listening to her woes about daycare felt like an omen. I was making the right choice. But then later I’d seen that flying Biff floating above my car. What did that mean?
At the surface, a flying toilet could certainly come across as a bad omen––all we have to do is imagine the crane’s chains snapping, the Biff tilting to one side and a literal shit storm letting loose above the highway. But then again, maybe we can get a little more creative. Perhaps the airborne Biff signaled all my worries and stresses floating away. Because making the decision to leave my work in order to raise my baby and write was stressful. Anxiety-producing. It was something that I had thought about but had not quite let myself imagine doing. And yet, here I was.
At this time last year, I had recently found out I was pregnant. It was cold and drizzly that spring, and I dragged myself out of my cozy bed complete with snoring dog to teach three times a week. Then I came back home and got back into bed. I forced myself to go on short, freezing walks in order to get fresh air, but I was so, so tired. I also felt buoyant, buzzy. More excited than I ever had in my life, but with a very large dash of anxiety. I had known people who had had miscarriages, and I knew the stats; every day, I studied the same graph charting probability of miscarriage by week. The data didn’t change, but every day I noted the fact that I was further along that downward trend, and for some reason I couldn’t explain, I had to visualize it fresh each day.
Around the time I found out I was pregnant, I started seeing crows. Everywhere. Multiple times a day. They seemed to seek me out. They seemed to be telling me something. Some people see crows and think: Disaster. Death. But not me. I knew the crows were good omens. I clung to the sight of them, the sound of them. I placed my hands on my belly––not visibly different, not yet. Everything is going to be okay, I said. But still, I had that feeling: the lift of the stomach, a fizziness that felt anxious and excited at once.
A quick Google search reveals that crows are harbingers of transformation, change. I have come to relate the feeling of transformation with that stomach-pressing-skyward feeling. A feeling that stayed with me throughout pregnancy and that returned around the time I was deciding whether or not to quit my jobs to be a stay-at-home mom/writer. A feeling that stayed once I did decide. But, as with the crows, I’ve come to decide that this is a good feeling, a feeling more excited than anxious. Some of you may know that I danced as a young person. I pirouetted, I made chaîne turns across the floor, I leaped.
Having a baby, quitting a job, making a serious change in your life––all of these are the deep plié and the launch into the air. Then, your stomach lifts inside your body, you yourself lift into uncharted territory, and you’re somewhere in the air that you haven’t been before. You’re at the apex of the leap. And, for a moment, you float with no thoughts of where you’ll land or if you pushed off hard enough. You simply exist in a new, exciting space. You’re free to fly somewhere new.
This week’s Heartburst List:
[The things I read, saw, or watched that gave me that heartbursting feeling. It’s like the opposite of heartburn.]
These Precious Days by Ann Patchett. I listened to this audiobook, narrated by the author, while walking with my dog and son around the neighborhoods. I’ve been on an Ann Patchett kick lately, and many of these essays, particularly the title essay, made my smile and affirmed for me that we artists are all kindred spirits in a way.
“Hurricane” by Plains. A great song on a great album. Perfect for driving on cool spring days.
The Mandalorian end credits by Ludwig Göransson. If you’re watching, let the credits roll and jam. This song slaps. Seriously.