A friend recently told me that “Relationships are like Swiss cheese, there needs to be more cheese than holes.”
My God daughter’s husband of one and a half years, decided that the marriage lacked cheese and left her, two weeks before she was to give birth.
She is a creative business woman who worked hard to establish herself as a success. She is a problem solver. She is poised, strong and resourceful. She channels Etta, Patsy and Melissa E. when she sings. She is a stunning beauty of a human being, inside and out.
Her family hails from a small rural town where the community college class icebreaker after summer was “What was the last animal you killed?” She wondered if a spider counted.
But the small town could not contain her. She is well traveled and has a graduate degree.
She suffered as a child of divorce. Her absentee father circled back later in life. Thankfully they healed their relationship sometime before he passed from a drug overdose.
And now she is the mother of a ten-day old infant.
The collage on her figurative vision board manifested into reality and depicted a beautiful life to be lived. If there were a Pinterest page of an idyllic life, it would have been hers. Most of it has been torn away, off the board, off the page.
Even the dog’s future is unsure.
Now what?
Her family rallies around her. Moments of joy soak up pain; bonding, nursing, loving up her baby. The first bath in the sink on the big sunflower mat, looking for the right duet to sing with her step father, baking cookies – little surprises that fill the spaces between shock and disbelief with smiles and laughter. She is processing all the changes and rerouting thoughts and plans about her future.
We watch her in awe as she navigates between moments of grief and joy, sidestepping the landmines and finding respite in her beautiful baby, and the infinite love she has for her. She has gracefully embraced motherhood.
She reminds us that life can be a mean mother fucker. And that the juggling of pain and joy is a learned skill, and a necessary one if we are to survive the meltdown (of our cheese) and the other gut wrenching blows that life can deliver.