while Jonah plays...

I am usually a person who needs to get out and go places instead of staying at home when I have Jonah all day. These days I sometimes stay in and around the house all day and don't even notice because my mind is all over the place, traveling so faraway every day.

Today I took Jonah to "Indoor Park," a place set up by the city for kids at a community center. Three days a week the gym at the center is open to families and kids and filled with toys, foot-powered cars, slides, etc. And all that for only one dollar. It's a great place to go when it's too cold or rainy to go outside.

Jonah's favorite item at Indoor Park is a foot-powered monster jeep. He can get in it and drive it for hours on end, occasionally stopping by the bench where I am parked and asking me to check the engine or gas up his vehicle. Today for the first time I noticed the jeep's wheels are bigger than Jonah's little head. What is it about monster jeeps and trucks that appeals to little boys so much?

I was at Indoor Park today for the first time since giving birth, reading my book on grief -albeit with the cover page masked so no one could tell- noticing mothers who were pregnant when I was and now had newborns strapped to their chests and toddlers running around the gym. I, of course, got emotional a few times, thinking about how that would have been me today if Amalia hadn't died.

I think of her constantly. I replay all that I remember in my mind over and over: the birth, my visits to the hospital, her last day with us...

After all the relatives left, the reality of Amalia being gone really set in. The predominant feeling now is a profound sadness, which consumes me occasionally, several times a day. Otherwise there are many times I think about her without feeling a lot, maybe just tiredness. And then, most of the time, I just go about my day in a mundane sort of way: fixing food, eating, picking up toys, playing with Jonah, thinking about the most random things like spring and all the places I want to travel.

I dread having to return to work three weeks from now. I know I will enjoy work - I like what I do and look forward to the time to myself there and the distraction of being able to think about other stuff. It's just that I don't have the energy to deal with having to talk about Amalia's death on a daily basis. I am also worried that others at work will stigmatize me for having gone through this; that they will whisper and look at me strange... I just need to remember my friend Derrick's words: "Like water off your back." He is right. And also not everything is about me. Grief is quite narcissistic, I now realize. And I didn't get that from a book.