You Could Make This Place Beautiful

by Maggie Smith

How I picture it: We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves—all of our selves—wherever we go.

It’s a mistake to think of one’s life as plot, to think of the events of one’s life as events in a story. It’s a mistake. And yet, there’s foreshadowing everywhere, foreshadowing I would’ve seen myself if I’d been watching a play or reading a novel, not living a life.

Postpartum depression broke over me like a colossal wave almost immediately after Violet was born, though I didn’t call it by its name, and I didn’t treat it. It’s hard to treat what you can’t—or won’t—name.

I was ashamed to think of how I’d leashed my joy and tugged hard every time it tried to run.

Sometimes I want to tell them: I’ve tried to love you the right way. I’ve tried to love them as if there is a right way. No, I’ve loved them without having to try at all, because I’m their mother, and the love is not work. Parenting is work: the cooking of meals, the washing of clothes, the tending of wounds, the taming of cowlicks, the helping with homework, the driving to soccer, the packing of lunches, the nding of missing things (water bottle lids, baseballs, library books, mittens), the consoling to sleep. The love? It’s not work.

The thing about birds: If we knew nothing of jays or wrens or sparrows, we’d believe the trees were singing, as if each tree has its own song. The thing about this life: If we knew nothing of what was missing, what has been removed, it would look full and beautiful.

How I picture it: We are nesting dolls, carrying all of our earlier selves inside us. I feel so full of the life I had before—the life I have already lived—how is there room for anything new? We feel and feel, and live and live, but somehow we’re never full. This life is elastic, impossibly elastic. There is always room for more experience. Our lives expand to accommodate anything.