37. Good Mothers Dont Show Their Asses
37
Good Mothers Don't Show Their Asses
Author’s note: When I decided to write this book, I thought it would be my legacy. But what I’ve discovered after talking with all these inspiring women is that we don’t have a singular legacy. The best of us leave behind a hole that can’t be filled, or even many small holes that someday, someone encounters and thinks, Oh, that’s what she did.
I hope when you read this book, you recognize someone’s lasting impact on you. I know I did.
- Lucie Knox
LUCIE
W hen I woke up, everything hurt. The bruise on my back where they’d given me the epidural. The searing sting on my vagina where they’d stitched me up. A dull ache in my abdomen. Even my teeth hurt from when I’d clenched during each contraction.
But it was over.
When I glanced to the side of the bed, panic flashed through me. The baby was gone. Her bassinet was missing too. They must have taken her to the nursery. She couldn’t go far since her little bracelet had a sensor that would set off an alarm if she left the maternity floor.
A sigh from the other side of the bed made me turn my head. Danny was draped across the vinyl armchair in a position that made my neck hurt in sympathy.
He’d stayed beside me all night.
My memories were muddled because of the pain my brain was already trying to forget, but I knew it hadn’t been pretty. Not only had I shoved a baby through a too-small channel and produced fluids and odors that I’d rather not remember, but I’d said things. Snapped. Shouted. About pain and exhaustion and the goddamn patriarchy even though the birth of a child was one thing the patriarchy, no matter how much it tried, couldn’t ruin.
I was sure good mothers didn’t show their asses—in the metaphorical sense—during childbirth. They took it in stride and appreciated the miracle of birth and the support of their partner, which was not what I’d done.
Yet Danny was still here.
He’d done his duty. He’d watched our child being born. He could be sleeping in that fabulous, cozy bed of his. Instead, he was here, waiting for me to wake up.
I shifted to face him and curled my legs up to minimize the pressure on my bladder. That first trip to the bathroom was going to suck.
Why had he stayed?
I couldn’t delude myself any longer. I knew why he’d stayed. Why he’d come in the first place even though I’d pushed him away and ignored him for weeks.
He loved me. For all that I was, the good and the bad. He saw it all, and he loved me anyway. I couldn’t repress the smile that curled my lips. I loved him too.
He was hardworking and principled and caring. He cared so much about everyone. Not in the way that I did, standing up for what was right in an abstract sense. No, Danny cared about individual people. Once he let you into his circle of people, he’d go to the ends of the earth for you. That was why he cared so much about the bar, and Barb, and his family.
And me.
I didn’t even have to prove myself worthy because he already thought I was.
But I wanted to prove it anyway.
I reached for the controls on the bed and raised the head so I could sit up, then I scooted to the edge and dropped my feet over the side. A pungent odor hit my nostrils.
Thanks, pregnancy hormones.
“Why the fuck does it smell like a bar in here?”