Machinery

I imagine gears clicking back into place, slowly, having been adjusted to fit a new life. I imagine them dropping into place, the spacing slightly altered, and perhaps the gear teeth looking more worn.

I imagine things adjusting in my life - not moving back to where they were, but at least moving again. There are more gears, and levers: gears named grief, and Gabriel and risk management and sorrow and loss. There are more things to go wrong or be balky, but things are still moving. This machine carries on, keeps functioning. Look, it talks, it walks, it writes. After months where the machinery of my life, it stopped dead, I find the sensation of things moving, to be, not strange, not unwelcome, but different.

I can feel those gears slip into place, reminders of what should have been, and what is. A reminder that I am in a different place, a place where there is a tiny space - a space between what should have been, and what is. A place large enough for my tiny, lifeless son, a place that does not seem large enough to contain my sorrow. Perhaps that is why the machinery stopped working for those long months. Perhaps, without the cog of a living baby, the machinery of my life could not function, until it was re-configured.

I am thinking of this, as I think about going to an event on Saturday, when Mr. Spit comes home. We went last year, it was the scene of the now-famous bacon-wrapped scallop issue. The time when I relished the taste and smell of a bacon-wrapped scallop at lunch, but by the time dinner rolled around, I could not only not eat the scallop, I couldn't watch Mr. Spit eat it either. We walked around, looking at mum's pushing too large strollers, and became convinced that a sling was the way to go. We created another space for Gabriel, another plan of what we would do, and who would be, another part in the life that was supposed to be.

And as I walk into the event, another cog will fall into place, another gear, another pulley or lever will begin to move, and I will walk further into the life that is and further away from the life that should have been.

We will go back this weekend, not living in the life of supposed to be, but living in the life that is. Living, daily, in a place that is not of our choosing. But living. With machinery that still works.