The Middle Place

Write what you know in the time you have

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I’ve started calling it the middle place: where I exist right now, where there seems there is no room for me in my own life. I’m still so connected to my baby—after three months and change, our relationship remains symbiotic—that I am not wholly myself these days. My children are the crucible, and I am constantly in waiting.

At times, I force myself into my own life, stealing extra minutes. I let them cry a little longer than I should. I use the pacifier like a snooze button. I’m angry I can’t exist on my own terms. Angry that this is the plight of a mother. 

Last week over coffee, a friend shared with me why babies often say ‘dada’ first. Mothers like me loathe this truism. The one where we ask why doesn’t she know my name yet, after all I’ve done for her? “It’s that they conceptualize dad first,” he said. “They’re so close to mom that they don’t see her as a concept that is separate from them.” This is the baby’s middle space: where her existence is so completely unknown to her. I am the only home she has.

The interesting thing about the middle place is that, while it feels like I am hanging in space, unmoored, I’m also living in a unique moment of unity with the world I’ve created. The middle place is not where we go when we are lost. It is its own place. It is the link. 

So no, I don’t completely exist in baby world—as much as she does not know it yet, she is also her own person (just littler). And as of now, I don’t completely exist in my world either. I exist in the middle, and because of this, I get to see both sides. I get glimpses of her giggles, her hours-long nap sessions taken on my chest. I also get short walks to grab coffee, and maybe sit with my book, while she sleeps in her stroller. Ours are two worlds with their own pleasures and disappointments. But we also have the middle place: somewhere that’s just for us, just for this time, when she feels like me and I feel like her, and the two are no different here.