Transit

Bookends of birth and death come simul-calling.

Exactly 8 months after my mom witnessed my third bio baby take her first breaths at home, my baby witnessed my mom’s last at home. “I made it!” She crowed at 5am in August, as I screamed the baby out into the water and John’s hands. “Will I pull it off?” She asked in late March. She did. She leaped across the water of consciousness and was free, the baby just learning to play peekaboo and rhinoceros kiss her cool forehead. She told me she could hear me yelling a block away as I birthed my daughter. Of course a mother can. But her leaving was quiet, seemingly grammatically impossible- no subject??? She who taught immigrants the bafflement of English language, is now Anywhere a mouse can’t go. And the baby just learning to say mamamamamammama. What a nine months it has been.