What Postpartum Depression Will Tell You
My daughter calls me using the magic of the future. I can see her face and the faces of my grandchildren on my cellphone. I grab a fourteen-inch, posable, superhero action figure and a small, purple, plastic vegetable with a face and pretend they are flying with each other. I make the cape on the masked man in black wave like he’s going extra fast. “Whooooosh,” I say. My grandson smiles and laughs and my day is made.
I’m incredibly lucky because I get to see their faces almost every day. Sometimes my granddaughter insists on holding the phone, which really means eating my face, and she hangs up several times before we’re done, ending with her haltingly waving to me bye-bye. I watch them coo and cry, and then start to scoot, then crawl, and then one day they say, “DeeDee! Guys!” and I go grab some toys so we can play together even though I’m two hundred miles away.
I get to see my daughter on the good days and the bad. I see her cycle through all her emotions while trying to raise small children and the way she feels battered after a particularly tough day of two small crying people who are demanding more, but unable to tell her just what the “more” should consist of, while they teethe, smear applesauce on the mirror, and sometimes just suddenly stop everything, make eye contact, and let out a heart-stopping scream to get attention before smiling…
