"When are you coming home again? I miss you."
She typed out the words on the screen, and then deleted them. She hesitated a moment, and typed them out again, hitting send before she could stop herself. It was only 9:30, and the sun was cutting through the wood slats of the blinds. A small gray cat had begun to sun itself in the alternating islands of light and dark now visible against the carpets. Her son's toys lay scattered across the living room, the wreckage of a multidimensional war between the Transformers, the Power Rangers and a few stuffed dinosaurs. Her son was like her, energy and creativity, but prone to bouts of melancholy and temper tantrums. Her daughter, on the other hand was much more like her husband--rigid and orderly. Her Legos were stashed neatly in a plastic tote under the table, waiting to be assembled and disassembled at a later date. She loved her children--more than she could have ever expected--and she was now struggling with the empty house they left behind when school began.
She tried to work a little, typing away at her keyboard in the living room. She even turned the TV off and replaced it with the sounds of soft country, hoping to set the soundtrack of her life toward productivity. Still, she thought of her husband. She thought of the smell of his cologne after he showered this morning. She thought of his strong, muscular thighs as he picked up the dirty laundry off the floor and casually set it down in the basket by the door. She stopped typing, as she thought about his hands, calloused and scraped, yet still so soft when their daughter wrapped her hand around his finger. She thought about how his arms felt when she cried into his shoulder the day she was initially laid off, years of struggle feeling like they were ripped away in an instant. She remembered the way he lifted her chin and told her "You are strong and talented, and they will regret losing you. But you won't regret leaving them."
Her phone alerted, and a blue light flashed revealing a small green text notification.
"I'll be home after 7. I know the last few days have felt hard, but once I'm home, nothing else is going to matter. You're the priority."
She finished the email she was writing, and closed her laptop. She swirled the bit of coffee that remained in her mug, and lost herself for a moment in the whirlpool it created. She was 34, and some days she wondered how much of herself she had lost in the last 8 years, how many opportunities she had missed while she swirled in the whirlpool of motherhood. Pushing off against the TV tray she had set up in the living room as a makeshift desk, she walked back into her bedroom. Her robe fell off her shoulders, and instead of pulling it back up, she cast it off. Hooking her thumbs into the waistband, she pulled off her underwear and left them in the pile as well. She looked down at the thin tanktop she wore to sleep in, and ran her thumb over the worn fabric. She loved the feel of it on her skin, and even loved the small holes at the hem. They were like her, worn through by time, but elegant--like holes in lace.
Emma stared at her reflection, taking stock of her body. She wanted to see herself as she truly was, not as a comparison to her younger self or to the boudoir photos she had taken right after Maggie was born. She ran her hands through her thick black hair, leaving them to linger on the top of her head. She looked deeply into the blue of her own eyes, and pondered if the 19 year old girl in an overpriced wedding dress knew who would be looking back at her. There were the beginnings of crow's feet in the corner of her eyes, and laugh lines that now creased the edges of her mouth. She wanted to be upset at them, but she'd made a promise to herself that she'd love her body as it aged, and these were the marks of how much she felt emotion, intense laughter and intense sadness.
She ran her hands down the side of her head, pulling on her earlobes in a trick that her therapist had taught her to ground herself in moments of anxiety. She felt each of the three piercings on her ears, and remembered the slight pain and glorious release that came with them. She drew slowly across her breasts, rolling her nipples just slightly in her fingers, remembering how much she had hated them in her teenage years--never sure if they were too small or too big, but definitely wrong--and also how powerful they felt when she used them for the first time to nourish Kameron.
She felt her stomach, and the slight stretch marks across her hips. It had been five years since Maggie was born and she still didn't feel quite comfortable in a bathing suit yet. She had opted to wear a one piece--an expensive, stylish one--on their last family vacation to Destin, and she had looked with a twinge of jealousy and attraction at the moms who felt comfortable enough to bare their midriffs at the beach. She toyed lightly with the small tuft of hair she kept just above her clit, intentionally maintained. She found it the perfect balance of restraint and nature. She loved the feeling of her bare skin, but wanted to also remind herself that her body was not supposed to be photoshopped or airbrushed to perfection. As she let her fingers linger a little bit more than perhaps was necessary, she thought back to her husband. She thought about how he looked this morning as he dressed for work, navy pants gripping his strong legs. She thought about how he looked last night, as he held himself up on his forearms, while cradling the back of her neck to pull her into him. She thought about way he collapsed into her when he finally came, guttural and spent, wordlessly sinking into her, their sweat mixing as he kissed her forehead and buried his face in the pillow.
She felt her wetness and contemplated the life they had built. Two kids, now off at school, a house on the outskirts of Seattle with neighbors they invited over for grilled chicken and beer. It wasn't the life she had envisioned for herself, certainly, when she set off for college. But it was the life that found her. It was the life that she had built from the stones she gathered as they traveled for his career--first in Florida, then Maryland, then Wisconsin, before Seattle. It was the life that had given the safety and stability that she knew she needed. But like her coffee this morning, she wondered what stood on the outside of the whirlpool, spinning close but just out of reach. She thought of the exes she had once loved, the way their hands felt on her body, the electricity that coursed through her when they first crossed all those boundaries she had assumed wouldn't come until her wedding. She remembered the hunger she had seen in the eyes of her professor the first day of class, when she sat in the front row of a lecture hall wearing clothes that she felt strong in.
But even more, she remembered how it felt to be in his arms at the Marine Corps Ball, in an expensive silk gown, holding onto his strong chest as his eyes locked with hers. She was well aware of how gorgeous all the women in the room were. Hell, she was attracted to some of them. But she knew she was safe and protected. She felt the weight of his eyes locked onto hers, and knew that she would always have to be the one to break the gaze. She felt home.
