The woman on the other line wanted to talk about breastfeeding, and we started out in that arena. The conversation meandered into postpartum depression, exhaustion, and the fear that breaks open your heart like an acorn cracking from the sheer force of an oak trying to escape. So many of us lived perfectly acceptable lives before motherhood exposed us to the vulnerability of loving an infant. But there is no turning back, and we are defenseless to the buffeting gales of tears... our baby's and our own. 

I listened. It was not hard. Her story touched me in places that have not healed in fifteen years. Perhaps the emotions have recovered to the extend they stay inside my chest, until a kindred sister speaks her truth and they come pouring out afresh like blood from an artery. I prefer the tidiness of a thick gauze bandage hidden under my shirt. 

I have not yet met her baby. But I love her. It makes no sense, to love someone you have never seen and may not for awhile. Yet the trestle between us is like a ribbon of steel. Her mother held her through sleepless nights and the panic of a hospital stay. I sang to my baby for those eleven days surrounded by white coats and monitors that left a mark on my being more indelible than a tattoo. I am tethered to my infant who no longer is one. I am bound to my friend and she to her daughter, so we form a bridge, two women standing hip deep in the frigid water of fear, two children carried high enough to stay dry. 

I wonder what it is like for a husband when his child suffers. Even more, what is it like to watch his wife enduring, or not enduring, the agony of being unable to protect her baby.

It was a stormy time for our family, as well as for my friend's. But either the water subsided, or my legs grew longer. In either case, we are still standing.