A Good Day

I haven’t felt like writing for the past few weeks. It started with a good day.

On that day I finished the first draft of Balthazar’s memoir. Well, technically it’s the second draft; six weeks or so ago I showed Jonathan a version that was chronological and he suggested dividing it into thematic chapters instead: Marriage, Body, Symbols, Death. In doing that I had to cut a lot, but somehow the manuscript got longer. It’s just shy of 60,000 words. On the long journey the book will make from here to publication I suspect it will gain words here and lose words there and ultimately end up a bit longer than it is now.

I think it will stay on the short side, though. A book about a stillborn baby is more dark chocolate than Hershey’s kiss: intense and bitter and best consumed in small quantities.

I wasn’t sad when I finished, though I had considered the possibility that I might be. Another ending, another stage of grief complete. Instead, I felt as relieved and exhilarated as I would have if it were any other book. Finishing a first draft is like reaching base camp on Everest. It’s not the end, not by a long shot, but at least you’re on the mountain. Even if the clouds obscure the summit, you know it’s up there. Base camp is a good place to be. I don’t have to let go of anything yet. If everything goes well, in five years I could still be talking to book groups about this book.

After I finished my draft I joked on Facebook about wanting to go out drinking, but instead I went to Crossfit. Driving there, I wished I could announce my accomplishment like it were any other: “I turned in my thesis!” or “I’m engaged!” But the gym has been a place of refuge for me precisely because no one knows. No one feels sorry for me there. If I tell them, and they ask what the book’s about, and I tell them that, too, then the gym becomes something that’s a part of my life and not a hideout from it. I have mixed feelings about that. Also, my coach Ben’s wife is pregnant. I can’t tell him until at least January.

Earlier in the week Ben had given me a lecture about “stepping it up” and “taking it to the next level.” When I started Crossfit I told myself that I would not push too hard. I didn’t want to risk injury. I figured that training five days in a row or driving yourself until you threw up was OK for the youngsters I work out with, because you can get away with that at twenty-five or thirty. But what seemed sensible at the beginning has become a rationalization for holding back.

For the metabolic conditioning portion of the workout that day, we did a series of two different weightlifting moves: 21 sumo deadlift high pulls, 21 push presses. Then 18 of each, then 15, all the way down to 3. The idea is to do the series as fast as you can. I positioned myself in the front of the room so I couldn’t compare myself to anyone else and get psyched out. I tried to do my reps faster than usual. When I got tired, I tried not to put the weight down to rest. When I rested, I tried to rest for shorter periods of time.

When I was finished, my time had beaten everyone in the gym that day except my coach. I had beaten the twenty-four year old woman with six-pack abs. I had beaten the guy who climbs mountains on the weekends. I had beaten the guy who is so good his name has become shorthand for kicking ass. I was shocked, yes, but I won’t pretend that I wasn’t “pumped” or “psyched,” or one of the other meat-headed words that seem to be the only ones that work in this context.

I have spent years trying to quash my competitive nature, doing yoga and attempting to cultivate peace and self-acceptance. But I think now that all I did was stifle an essential part of myself. There is more than one path to the same place. In my Father’s house there are many rooms. I seem to thrive in the hot and sweaty room with a lot of heavy weights in it, with one eye on the clock and one eye on the chalkboard with the top time of the day written on it.

As I was driving home from the gym, thinking about the possibility of a book deal, I burst into tears. Because I realized that not only was I able to exist in my body, in a present that was more or less rewarding, I was also able, at least for a moment, to envision a future in which something went well. That had not happened since Balthazar died.

When I realized I was momentarily happy, I freaked out, and then, naturally, I tried to talk myself out of it. I started thinking that maybe I had screwed up and not done the whole workout, even though Ben was watching me and saw me do it. I started thinking that the other people thought I had gloated afterward in an unseemly way, or thought I was pathetic for being so excited. I started thinking that to push to be the best in the gym was ridiculous and putting myself forward was too much. I started thinking that instead of looking fit and trim in my new racerback top, I look fat and ugly. I started thinking that to spend so much time on exercise is frivolous and stupid, when I could be mentoring at-risk youth or boxing up relief supplies to send to Syria.

I felt guilty, because for the first time in fourteen months I was thinking about my own life and not Balthazar’s. Or about my life in relation to something other than Balthazar. For a moment, at least, I was something other than a dead child’s mother. When I sent my manuscript to someone to read, I forgot until she replied that condolences were appropriate. I had forgotten for a second that it was anything other than a book I had written, a book I was proud of. 

Write about myself, without the imprimatur of bereavement protecting me? I don't know how to do that. 

*

I haven’t read the memoir Wave yet. My brother refused to buy it for me for my birthday, because he thinks I’d be crazy to read it. It’s about a woman whose parents, husband and two young sons were killed by the tsunami on December 26, 2004.

This is what Cheryl Strayed had to say about it in The New York Times Book Review: “The most exceptional book about grief I’ve ever read . . . I didn’t feel as if I was going to cry while reading Wave. I felt as if my heart might stop . . . Deraniyagala has fearlessly delivered on memoir’s greatest promise: to tell it like it is, no matter the cost.”

When I do read it--and how could I not?--it will be to try to answer the essential question: how did she go on living? How does one live after a loss that is Biblical in its devastating totality? I don’t expect a redemptive ending—how could there be one?—but is there a lesson for me, some perspective from a place I hope I never have to go? 

Because there is a difference between a heart that continues to beat of its own accord, a body that takes up space, and being alive. I suspect Sonali Deraniyagala will have something to say about that.