In This Hollow Space

Happy Valentine’s Day. If you’re in the mood for a love story, may I suggest checking out my piece, Paella Valenciana: A Love Story, which was published earlier this week as part of Stanchion’s Elegant Variations series.

Here’s a taste:

Thanks as always for reading and for all of your support!

In This Hollow Space

One meaning of the word depression is a hollow, a space or section that is lower than the surrounding area. This is the kind of depression that appeared suddenly in the center of my lower back, my spine slinking inward as if in retreat.

As my depression (the mood disorder kind) grew, so too did this depression. I checked it daily in the mirror and wondered if I was imagining things, but my husband saw it too. “Yes,” he told me. “Your back looks weird.” Like it had sunken in. A small cave in the plane of my body deep enough that if you could walk along my back, you would surely stumble and fall into it, find yourself stuck. It was deep enough to cause alarm.

I stretched and I lay on heat packs. I slept at night propped up on pillows with a bolster under my knees and tried not to shift at all because to do so sent a sharp pain through my body and down my legs. In the morning, I was so stiff and sore, I could barely move.

I keep having the same horrible dream. My son is taking a bath and I go in to let him know it’s time to get out and get ready for bed. He is floating under the water the way he does when he’s washed his hair. He looks peaceful and serene, incredibly beautiful, so I stand there for a moment and just watch him. Then it occurs to me that I’ve been watching for too long and he is not floating, but drowned. I race to pull him out of the tub, but he is so tall already, so long-limbed, and his body is slick from the water. I can’t get a good grip on him and have to grab him by the hair to wrench him out of the tub and onto the floor where I try to resuscitate him. The whole dream is so vivid. I can feel the water soaking through my clothes. I can feel the clamminess of his skin, and the fact that he’s no longer there. This isn’t our bathroom. The tub is too big and too deep, the room too large and sterile. The bathroom door opens onto a long hallway that is not part of our house. I shout and shout for help but no one comes. It is just me alone with my child and I cannot save him.

This is not subtle symbolism. I don’t need Carl Jung to come along and tell me that right now is an anxious, worrisome moment in history where I fear I lack the tools to protect my increasingly independent children from the dangers of a world I don’t recognize. I get it. But unfortunately getting it doesn’t help me sleep any easier.

This dream is just the tip of the dark iceberg of my thoughts lately. On a recent morning that was not quite as bitterly cold and miserable as most of the mornings we’ve had lately, my toddler and I went out for a walk. I found one of those baby carriers that is just a giant piece of fabric tucked away in my closet and wrapped it around my hips and lower back, pulling it tight to help stabilize my spine and limit the movement of my pelvis. I let my son lead the way as I often do, knowing that the farther he took us away from the house, the farther I would inevitably have to carry him back home, my body sparking and aching with each step. But I simply followed each time as he pointed and said, “this way,” and led us out to a spot where the road crosses over a river, a train track and then a highway all in a row before leading into an enormous park. There is a small service ramp on the side of this road that leads down to a maintenance yard near the train tracks. It is a spot I know well having spent countless summer days here baking in the heat rising from the asphalt when my older son was a toddler. On one side you can watch the cars and trucks streaming down the highway and on the other, you can see the light rail pass by on its way to and from downtown. This was, of course, my son’s chosen destination and we spent half an hour shuffling back and forth, counting semi-trucks and school buses on one side, watching the train and pointing out the waterfall beyond the bare trees lining the tracks on the other. On the highway side, chain link towers high over the concrete wall to prevent anyone from falling (or leaping) onto the road below, but on the train track side, there are just a few thick metal bars above the wall. As we waited for the train, I leaned out over the top bar and let my feet float off the ground, stretching my back. It felt too good, though, hovering over the edge, tempting fate, imagining my body tumbling through the air toward the ground. So I set my feet back down and sat on the curb next to my son who is just tall enough to see over the concrete wall without the first bar blocking his view.

We waited for the train. We waited and waited. They run every fifteen minutes or so when they are running on schedule which is often not the case. It didn’t come. Fifteen minutes passed. Twenty. The clouds moved in and the wind picked up and our sunny, somewhat mild morning had suddenly turned into a chilly, gray day as we edged toward nap time, underfed and under dressed. I told my son it was time to go and he protested. A simple “no” at first, followed by a plea to “see the train.” I offered one more minute that turned into five and when the train still hadn’t come, my frustration turned to anger, at myself for not having planned properly, at having failed to bring any food or warmer layers, at my son for his insistence that we make the impossible happen, and his perseverance in the face of obvious disappointment, at the way I could see his tantrum mounting and could feel the tension of it in the weird, alarming hollow of my lower back, at the train for not coming and the weather for turning and at the whole state of a world that lately feels like it is failing us all on every level and yet we are still expected to get up and go about our days as the existential weight of it all carves a deep depression into our bodies and souls.

I picked him up and carried him screaming in my arms away from the service road and back over the bridge toward our house, the wall to minimize the sound from the highway rising alongside us, blocking his view of the train just as I heard it come rattling over the tracks. “See the train, see the train,” he yelled, thrashing in my arms, my back aching and straining in the effort to hold him as I took him away from the one thing he wanted. “There’s no train,” I lied to him. “The train is gone.” We both cried all the way home.

It is Valentine’s Day and my older son, who thanks to a combination of planned closures and snow days is on day three of no school this week, suggested this morning that we go for a walk along Stony Run, a series of trails that run through the woods surrounding a stream near our house. He and I used to walk along the trail all the time when he was little, climbing over fallen trees and collecting rocks and leaves. I haven’t taken his little brother in part because prior to my surgery this fall, I wouldn’t have been able to safely carry him up any of the hilly paths out of the trail to get back home if I’d needed to.

The depression in my back seems to have resolved itself, healing in time as whatever virus (likely the flu) that had taken over our household has slowly moved on. The depression in my mind has lifted slightly but hangs on like the winter weather, easing here and there only to return again in a bleak, frosty blast. I still dream about my son’s lungs filled with bathwater, but spend less time imagining my own body toppling over the edge of some of abyss and smashing into the ground. If you live long enough with depression, you learn to count the wins wherever you can find them.

You learn to count whatever small bits of joy come your way. Which is what we did on our walk through Stony Run: ten robins, five woodpeckers, two with red heads like hearts bobbing through the bare trees. My toddler noted the sound of the water from the stream. My son climbed fallen trunks and pointed out the spot where in the spring you can find tadpoles and search for frogs. I walked without pain and let the sun warm my face. “Happy Valentimes,” my son said, holding on a little longer to this mispronunciation.

“Happy Valentines,” I told him, my whole body aching with love.

You can find more of my writing & contact information at clairemtaylor.com. If you’d like to further support my work, please consider purchasing one of my books, or a copy of Little Thoughts Press. I also have a ko-fi page.