Here's to Letting Go...

Sitting in a hotel suite, my son is banging toy trucks against the air conditioner vent, the desk is cluttered with faxes and forms and applications for mortgage lenders, the phone is off the hook (with the disconnected handset trailing around The Boss's little legs), towels are spilled in a heap across the couch, blocks and books and puzzles are scattered over the floor and from the corner of the room, the Food Network is teaching me how to perfect my lobster bisque recipe.

And at the center of it all, I'm at peace.

Summer sent an email this morning, she's back with the boyfriend who bruised her breasts and marked her arms with deep purple fingerprints (whom she left not even two weeks ago to pursue another man, who subsequently has decided he wanted to screw his ex instead.) And so she's back with the abusive coke head. Her soon-to-be ex-husband is demanding more visitations with the children and for Summer to give him money towards payments on their old house (that has yet to sell.) The tone of her email is desperate. Help me. Fix me. Tell me what to do.

And at the center of it all, I'm at peace.

The seller accepted our offer on the house, and now we're entering the terrible nerve-wracking, humbling experience of spilling our financial lives out for strangers to pick at and scrutinize. My realtor calls often. My husband is busy in business meetings and training and I'm left to fill out fax-smudged documents while holding our son at arms distance so that he doesn't get sticky fingers on the important papers.

And at the center of it all, I'm at peace.

My body is no longer my own, and is making it known moreso with each day. My hormones are a mess. I burst out in hysterical laughter during sex the other night, which would have been fine, except that it then turned to sobbing...and when my husband asked, quite nervously, what was wrong, I started laughing so hard that I again doubled over in tears.

I stand in front of the mirror and lift my shirt to study the smooth white skin of my slowly-stretching stomach. Will there be stretch marks this time? Is the scale going to scream at me at my next appointment? Have I lost the contours of my face - has it become rounder. Fatter. Twenty-more weeks of self-scrutiny and hormonal mishmash to go.

And at the center of it all, I'm at peace.

Time to let go of these things I can not control and embrace the ones that I can. Like my little man, who's so quietly sipping his juice now and staring out the wide windows at the cars that rush past. Vrooom. His voice hums from behind the cup. The sound of life moving beyond our small space. The sound of letting go.