Labored Breathing
Ooo-ooo-EEE, ooo-ooo-EEE. In a nondescript office building adjacent to the hospital, I remember learning Lamaze breathing in my prenatal class. Nobody told me I’d use it when my kid was a teenager.
My hands gripped the steering wheel as I swung into a parking lot off the highway. The kid next to me grew quiet, their* belligerent tirade dwindling as I veered off the road and threw the car in park. “Sorry,” they muttered sarcastically, with just a hint of nervousness. Maybe this was the thing that would finally push Mom into the homicidal zone.
I gripped and released, flexing my hands on the steering wheel, forcing each finger to relax. I breathed, in and out, feeling my jaw clench and unclench. I wasn’t pushing out my baby but my baby was pushing all my buttons. Ooo-ooo-EEE, ooo-ooo-EEE.
Words slammed through my head, words I wanted to spew forth onto my maddening child. I could destroy them with the words forming in my head, I thought. Tempting. To win this argument, to put them in their place. They were so far out of line. They had no line. They were a lineless, blurry Monet painting, and I hate the Impressionists.
I wanted to crush them with my superior intellect and felt the words load into my mouth like Skeeballs ready to shoot. My kid was going down.
My mind was so loud, eviscerating them with every accusation. I was in closing arguments of the courtroom of my mind and I was winning; I was brilliant; all must bow before my knowledge and logical reasoning.
I hesitated, the words pounding on my tongue. I am wiser, I am more experienced ... and I have more self-control, I told myself. I let out another breath, in and out. I have more self-control. They might blurt whatever they want, attack me however they feel like in the moment, but I have self-control. I can’t.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Ooo-ooo-EEE, ooo-ooo-EEE.
It was impossible that my mind could be so loud and my mouth so quiet. The silence pulsed between us, they afraid to move and me choosing every second, every moment not to speak.
We sat quietly in the car. In a void. The loud shouting drained down into the floorboards and in its wake left such quiet that it wasn’t just quiet, it was the absence of sound, like we’d plunged off a cliff into the sea below and we hung motionless, waiting to see if the water would whoosh in and drown us.
I took one more deep breath, unclenched my jaw, backed out of that parking spot—random waystation along the highway—and drove my kid home. I walked into the house gingerly, neither of us ready to reengage. There would be time for resolution soon enough, but for now, I let the abyss between us fill with the unspoken. I’d sift through and pluck the words worth saying when I was ready. Not now. Tonight was for the triumph of breath, of pressing pause, of choosing relationship over winning. Ooo-ooo-EEE, ooo-ooo-EEE.
We would live to love another day, intact. Someday they would be wiser, more experienced, and they would understand.
* As they’ve gotten older, I promised my kids I’d watch my pronouns so they’d all have plausible deniability. So “they” is now singular, as far as I’m concerned. This grammar nerd is struggling, but it is what it is.
Photo by Lottie Caiella.