Heavy, start-of-summer trees flank the highway. I notice my furrowed brow, the lines stacked on my forehead, the way my heart speeds up when my three year old demands me to do something from her car seat. I've been smothered in obligations for weeks and weeks with not enough silence and "me time." I try not to be resentful. Not to sigh when my name is said more than 7 times. To hear my name like it's the first time it has ever been said. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
I'm more familiar with the sound of my car on a highway than I'd like to be. Its dull drone. Its whiz. Its predictability in motion and sound from start to finish. But there are hawks perched on light posts, scanning the asphalt for mammalian remains. And there's comfort in this.
Her feet press into my seat from her seat. I'm the person she demands to reach for her water bottle, a book, a snack, a song. Outside faces of drivers, serious and sleepy, move forward. Or backward. To the place they were or will be. A ginormous flag droops, a lineup of yellow busses sit and wait, vines creep over the edge of highway walls, a prison in the distance is filled with people inside parched of oxygen, but mostly love.
She falls asleep for a half hour. A space opens up. I can disappear. No I can't. Because I should be talking to my husband. About dreams. The wind. How to say "yes" in Manderin. I touch him. He loves this. It's so easy to give him something if it's this. A simple series of lines drawn up and down his neck and face and back.
The landscape opens up as the road narrows. We weave in and out of green mountains. A furious ocean reveals itself through gaps in trees. Brine fills my nostrils. She wakes up. I'm refreshed. And simultaneously exhausted. This is motherhood.
