Milk spots

Danielle has a new baby.  When she wakes up in the morning the mattress has wet circles where her nipple pressed it's sweet, hot juice into the fabric.
My mattress has these circles too but they dried up 2 years ago.
I could almost cry at this desert upon which I sleep.
When my breasts began receding back into my chest, I thought I'd be happy.  I thought I'd be free of their weight and obligation to lie down in submission every 2-4 hours.
But I wasn't.

Happy was not the feeling.  Free was not the feeling.  It was only less.  I felt like less.
As if my children had just shown up for dinner and then hurried out to the driveway to their scooters and skateboards and chalk and legs walking.

Now when I put on my bra, I lift up the loose flap which used to be a breast. I set it into the pocket of my bra, just like my Mom used to do.  She nursed 6 babies.
I used to watch her do that and think it was sad.  Her bras were old and thin and hardly necessary.
They were a pale dingy pink with worn down lace.

She had a boob job when I was twelve.
I remember her coming home dazed and eyes half-shut.
She was standing in front of the mirror with her shirt off.
Two bulbs as big as ripe cantaloupes pushed against her red skin.
I thought they might right through her skin, they looked so unnatural, so angry.
She looked baffled at how the got there,  I was too.

My Dad hurried her off into the bedroom and I heard her crying.
Shortly after that she started drinking.
I didn't know that though.  I only knew that she was mad a lot, and gone a lot and I liked it when she was gone.
Shortly after that, she was gone for good.

I didn't miss her though.  She had become bitter like a cucumber left on the vine too long.
She was no longer the mother who sang me primary songs in her timid, wavering and perfect voice.
The one who traced a path along my cheek, through the channel of my nose and upper lip and up over the crest of my forehead.
She went to that plastic surgeon and held out the skin which used to be breasts and told him,
"Fill me up."
That's exactly what she said:  Fill me up.
How could he?  How could he give her back all that she had lost?
How could they know what she was really missing?

I liked it better when she delicately lifted the empty spot and laid it into her bra.
There was an integrity in that gesture, and I intend to keep it.
So although I am now a little bit less, the part I gave away is still out there.
It is riding bikes in the sunny driveway.
It is breathing steady in the next room the wide breath of dreams.
It is taking a bold tumbling pass with 12 year old muscles that I started from scratch.
It is devouring books with eyes that see more than they understand.

My mother visits often.  To a large degree I have lived her life, and I do not fault her for scrambling to fill a space that is endless.  A mother's heartbreak is constant.  It rests along the edges of every precious moment.  It is the knowing that we do not get to keep any of it.