Frankenbelly

There's a four-inch incision in the middle of my lower belly. At present, it's held shut by a row of shiny metal staples. Kid pulls up my shirt to see it, a look of doctorly concern on his face. "That's Mommy's boo-boo!" I tell him. He nods, knowingly. Pulls my shirt back down, pats me gingerly. Then he points to his most recent bruise or bump or scrape. "Mama?" he says, little eyebrows pointed up in a question. "Yep, buddy, that's YOUR boo-boo." Solidarity.

Does he remember, I wonder, coming out of my belly? The quick yank that brought him out of the warm, aquatic world of my abdomen, and into the dry brightness of his life outside of me?

I remember it. Strapped to the table with my arms spread wide, barely able to see over the surgical drape. Pressure, voices, clinking of instruments, and then that little squall of him, tentative at first and then louder, louder, louder still. Startled by the separation, maybe? Or simply cold, or made grumpy by intruding, tugging hands.

Four times now I've been on the operating table. He was the first, and the scariest. Everything was new, unknown. How quickly it's become routine: bloodwork, IVs, nurses and doctors and gurneys with wheels that rattle and squeak as I'm taken from one room to another. Drugs that make me babble and cry and (sometimes) flail as I wake up, my own rude awakening, pulled from anesthesia into consciousness again.

My little man looks at me with his tiny doctor's face, furrowed brow, and I look back at him. We understand the journey. Solidarity.