The Inbetween
it's one word now
This is one of those writing it directly into the Substack dashboard, no drafts no edits just open myself up and dump it out.
The warmest hi to you out there. How are you? Truly asking.
I am in the inbetween. It feels like one word so I am making it one word.
The inbetween is so uncomfy. Or maybe, I feel so uncomfy in the inbetween.
Every day I try to take a million deep breaths and remind myself that the inbetween is not in fact life-threatening.
We are in the middle of an unplanned cross-continental move and are staying with my parents.
Which is sometimes so sticky.
And much much much of the time is so sweet.
Every other day I wake up alone.
And on the other days I wake up between my two girls, their sleepy voices say good morning, mama.
We snuggle until they start pinching and poking each other over and across me and my switch flips instantenously from
I am the luckiest woman alive how did I get so lucky how did I make these perfect creatures
to
if you don’t get off of me in the next 10 seconds I am going to tear my eyeballs out.
Then they watch Bluey until 7:30, which is when we are allowed upstairs to the kitchen which is next to my parent’s bedroom.
We plod up the stairs together and now it’s my turn to say good morning, mama.
It’s the first time since we became parents 5 1/2 years ago that we have consistent childcare support.
We came back to our village. And I will never take for granted that we have a village to come back to, one where the relationships are healthy enough that it’s possible.
Not perfect but good enough to try, where everyone is genuinely trying their best.
One outcome of this is that little windows of time pop out at me now.
And in some of those windows I am doing this thing called The Fitness.
This is a thing I used to know quite well and now is so unfamiliar as to be almost entirely foreign.
And I want to be really honest here.
My motivation for doing The Fitness is about half-half:
My older daughter asks me to run races when we walk on the old railroad track that’s been turned into a walking path and I can only do one or two before I am out of breath. My younger daughter asks for a piggyback ride and I can’t carry her the whole way.
And
I look at photos taken recently and don’t recognize myself. My favorite pants don’t fit.
The thoughts I’m having about this matter to me, so I try to investigate.
And it’s confusing.
I actually sort of love how I look. Like a bushel of round, ripe fruit. Did you know that round is sexy? Because I only sort of know.
Because I have internalized fatphobia which we need to look at for what it is, a literal fear of not being accepted or loved based on my shape.
And it’s confusing.
Because I want to feel strong and nimble and be able to chase and carry my kids.
And I want to decolonize my mind from this absolute horseshit.
And I want to eat healthy, nourishing foods because I want to have energy and stay alive.
And also potato chips are one of the best nervous system regulators I know.
So I’ve been taking hour-long walks up and down the hills around my parent’s house.
Today I saw a turkey.
And I caught myself thinking, what I’d really like to be doing for exercise is swimming in the bay
and how can it be that I can already complain about something that was impossible only a couple of months ago? How can it be that it’s already not good enough?
And yes it’s great to wish and dream and plan for an eventual swim, but not at the expense of enormous gratitude for the magic of an hour walk, by myself, two days in a row.
Today my parents weren’t even with my kids when I went walking.
But there are all these moments, little and big, that make it possible.
Like how this morning my mom made my girls their breakfast while I pooped and then later in the day my dad sat outside while my eldest played in the little splash pool, which by the way is made of non-toxic HDPE because I’m in America now and there are downsides to the fact that there are a million products here but there are also upsides, and yesterday afternoon my mom took the girls on a walk and the morning before my dad took my eldest to the playground when I was at home with my youngest who had the stomach flu and all of that together means that my husband can work all day and I can keep my sanity and then at 5 o’clock he can hang out with the kids while I go for a walk for an hour by myself.
Can I get a hallelujah?
Let it ring.
As I write this I can hear them laughing hysterically upstairs.
I’ve been watching Outlander and sometimes they come downstairs while a sex scene is playing and I fast forward because don’t you also still feel like a 16-year-old?
I have ideas for things I want to write about, things that are more substacky like with topics and that fancy thing called ideas,
but I’m not there yet.
This is my dispatch from the inbetween.
Thank you for being.
“We plod up the stairs together and now it’s my turn to say good morning, mama.” - the full circle of this. And also, this essay gave me all the feels, all at once. Especially the stream of consciousness paragraph. I think you’re really on to something, finding beauty in the inbetween.
Just another mama over here loving your writing and celebrating that you are experiencing a little more spaciousness and support in parenting. 👏♥️