Relentlessly Restless

Four weeks.

I can barely believe it’s been four weeks since Evvie was born. It’s just like a new mother to say something like that, isn’t it? A whole month. I want to mourn the time passing but the time has been so healing for our family. She’s getting a little pudgy and slowly creeping out of that super fragile state of teetering on the edge of 6 pounds and making me an anxious wreck. I’m less and less nervous about her and every day I feel a little stronger physically and emotionally.

Sometimes I feel like I could exist alone on tiny fingers and fuzzy booties.

That said, I have rarely left the house. I haven’t even watched television. I go to bed with Evvie and the kids every night to maximize my sleep time, but those hours late at night are my favorite. I used to stay up until 2AM nearly every night and I loved it. It’s quiet and dark, and I am completely at peace because all of my loves are safe and sound sleeping upstairs. Any “me” time I have is spent writing, or taking photos, or grocery shopping. In that order (showers don’t happen frequently enough to list yet). I actually really love doing all those things, but I’m starting to get super itchy.

The hours that I spend bouncing and cooing, my brain is somewhere hovering above my body, moving through a cascade of memories of our life in New York City. Even when Beau was tiny, I’d be outside walking Jack from school and having our daily coffee dates. We’d go grocery shopping together even, and I’d curse under my breath about having to pile all the food into my stroller while the kids laughed and danced in the aisles. It was so hard but it was so, so good. I was hands-on and exasperated, exhausted, and completely thrilled.

We live on the side of a mountain now, close enough to the ocean that we can smell the sea and hear the sealions, and on very clear days if I stand on my tiptoes I can even see the ocean.

I’ve been on tiptoes a lot lately.

Our neighbors are lovely, two of them even brought us dinner after Evvie was born. We’ve never had that before. There are tons of awesome, kind children playing in the streets and sleeping in the houses that surround ours. Friends for life.

This is everything I’ve wanted since I was a child. Literally, everything. We have a home and a tribe around us. We are so fortunate in so many ways and I am completely cognizant and grateful, though it plays into my guilt for feeling so incomplete and lost since we moved to Santa Cruz. The complicated, busy, gritty, packed life that we led in the city kept me alive and moving, motivated and inspired every single waking moment. I’d leave to get a gallon of milk even if it was raining and find something or someone along the way that would lead my brain down some hectic and exciting corridor.

I guess, even after a year, I still don’t feel at home and that drives me crazy. I probably just need a good book or a long swim to massage my brain back into a living and inspired heartbeat, both of which fall under the “self care” category that I’ve been preaching about but hardly actually living. That part is always the easiest for me to forget.

Then again, I’ve been sick for nearly two weeks and just found out I have pneumonia, so maybe I should just relax and try to just be? Probably that.

There is so, so much to be happy about. Perhaps I’m just relentlessly restless.