Rhythm

I know it’s months (years?) away, but there will be a moment when all the things that right now feel so huge and different and glaringly not normal slip into the mundane. I know this only because I have lived it multiple times now. And no matter how strange or untried the outset of a new norm, there is a point where the shocking little surprises and things we must accept but refuse to embrace shift into The Way It Is.

I remember new motherhood feeling exactly this same way. My life up until the point where I was responsible for a completely dependent little person did nothing to prepare me for the reality of being unable to shower without another adult somewhere in the house. There was the learning curve of stopping whatever I was doing to feed my baby when she was hungry, the awkwardness of traveling with extra diapers, two changes of clothes for her, a shirt for myself, and anything else that seemed like a good idea, the utter insanity of trying to navigate a grocery store *and* cater to her needs. I cried– more than once. And though I loved my daughter more than I had ever imagined possible, I mourned my old life. Because this, this topsy-turvy place where all I had ever known was set on its head … Some days, to tell the truth, it sucked.

And then it didn’t. Then, one day, without my even noticing, the things that had seemed paralyzing at first just *were.* I thought no more about a quick nursing session than anything else on my schedule; it no longer occurred to me to watch the clock. I learned to enjoy outings that weren’t as carefree as before, perhaps, but were still worth undertaking– even with a diaper bag and stroller. I was a mother. And I just went with it.

The same shock struck me when we moved coasts in 2002. My confidence wavered as I navigated the waters of a new life somehow so different from the old. I opened my windows in the morning, saw fog, and wanted to curl into a ball and cry. I missed my sweet tea at restaurants. I couldn’t believe that my children were picking up Washingtonian accents. But then the rain came one October and I welcomed it. The summer high soared to an appalling 80 degrees and I thought I would die of the heat. I picked blackberries from the bushes that grew wild around our hill, and in knew I was at home.

Already, I am finding the shock fading from many aspects of life. The rhythm of turning on water pumps and the lights suddenly shutting off mid-sentence as I’m reading aloud is no longer something I have to absorb; it simply is. We have a pattern for fitting our entire family into a single taxi, clown-style, and I give no pause to the absurdity of it. I settle in to do school for the day and am interrupted, countless times, by ringing puja bells, blaring horns, and barking dogs … but each time I am jolted a little less. Each time I am slightly more immune to the foreignness of it all.

This is one of the most amazing bits of the human experience, I think. We adapt. We expand, we grow, we acclimate to the hot water in the pot with surprising speed and veracity. We are, deep in our souls, survivors. All of us.