sucker punch

Longing happens in the gut. I know this because when when I walk the neighborhoods in the evening and I smell someone else’s dinner cooking and hear the sophisticated clink of cutlery on porcelain it feels like a sucker punch. From the windowpanes radiates a family in a glow cast wide enough to illuminate something I’m missing. I can’t decide if I’m fantasizing about being a parent or a child. 

I know I want to be a mother someday—I want the chaos of family dinners, the skinned knees and sticky skin, the curiosity of souls that are simultaneously their father’s and mine and their own. I want to be sealed together as a family. But the thought also terrifies me. I know that once I push a baby from my body there will be no turning back. Am I strong enough to make such enormous sacrifices, both physically and mentally? “You’re scared because you care,” Rachel tells me. She had a baby last fall, a button-eyed cherub named Saili. “It’s all so worth it. You are stronger than you think.” I can tell from the certainty in her voice that she’s discovered this strength within herself too.