Same As It Ever Was

by Claire Lombardo

She feels, too, unbelievably tired, stymied by gravity; so much of motherhood has, for her, been this particular feeling, abject disbelief that she’s not only expected but obligated to do one more thing.

She thinks of Helen Russo beside her at the botanic garden, Helen Russo, whom she has always loved too: love that she’d never quite been able to define, love that wasn’t specifically anything, familial or sexual or aspirational, parental or romantic or platonic, but also wasn’t specifically not any of those things: love that was simply a point of fact, its own entity.

she wondered if her own mother had held her like this, had contemplated the nuances of her face and envisioned all the ways it would change. She wondered if her mother had felt her heart break for all the things she couldn’t control and for all the things she could, for all the ways her child would come to know the world while not wrapped in her arms, and she wondered if her mother had touched foreheads with her like they were ponies, because that’s what she was doing with Ben, this person who was inexplicably hers.