little fishes in the ocean (or, Albert Einstein never had to deal with CPS)

I haven't been in the ocean this summer, haven't even walked down to the beach, not even the one right by my house. I cannot bring myself to do it with part of my heart a thousand miles away. How do you explain to someone what it feels like to have your child taken from you? I've cared for so many mothers who know this pain, this out of body experience there are no words for. It can't be put in words but I'm going to try anyway.

When you carry a baby, some of their cells cross into your body and become part of you. There are literal pieces of your children inside you. They are very small and very real. Scientists call it microchimerism. Like most scientific discoveries, this was already known by mothers and poets. NASA relates a similarly obvious tidbit: "quantum entanglement, the idea that particles of the same origin, which were once connected, always stay connected. Even if they separate and move far apart in time and space, they continue to share something beyond a mere bond — they shed their original quantum states and take on a new, united quantum state which they maintain forever. This means if something happens to one particle, it affects all the others with which it’s entangled. " Right now one of my babies is a thousand miles away, but he is also right here. He is always here, with me, inside of me, part of me.

In some ways, it's comforting, maternal love being unrestrained by space or time. But it means that when our children are taken from us, a part of our body is ripped out. A part of our heart and our soul too. It is a constant ache that rises and falls but never goes away. You're terrified you won't get your babies back, but you also can't even allow that possibility to fully take shape in your mind. Like Schrodinger's cat, you're existing in two states at once.

You have to go on existing in the world. In fact, you have to do all the things necessary to get your child back. You have to be perfect. More than perfect. You have to be contrite for things that weren't your fault or that you did to protect them. You have to submit to a public shaming like all the women before you. And you must do it gratefully. Did you know the modern courts began with witch trials? Did you know they never really changed?

And so, you walk around, appearing to all the world an intact human being. They cannot see the congealed blood of the gaping wound in your chest. They cannot hear the constant soundtrack in your mind of your child crying. Cannot taste the bile always in your throat, the flavor of grief and fear and all the anger you must hold inside.

Most of them have the innocence you may have had once too. They think surely you'll get your children back soon. Soon. They don't know time passes differently now. That taking your children was so urgent but giving them back is most definitely not. They don't know your child is a possession now and possession is nine tenths of the law. That inertia is cruel. That all the screaming in the world won't compel the tides to change course.

The moon waxes and wanes and the days fall away. Life goes on. But nothing looks quite the same. You are functioning (most of the time). You are surviving, sometimes you're even doing more than surviving. But always there is a shadow covering the world. (and the earth was formless and void, darkness was over the surface of the deep). Gravity is a little too heavy, the air is thick. Nothing is ever quite still.

What I want you to know, if you are ever in this desolate landscape, is that you are not alone. You cannot see it, but there are women all around you in the same place. And thousands of years of mothers are with you too. I say that not because men in physics labs have thought it up, but because I know it in my bones. You do too. You may not trust yourself right now, but you do know it to be true. Not in words but in your body.

The same body that grew your children. A body capable of miracles. A body strong enough to withstand more than you ever thought possible, for the sake of your babies. A body tired and broken that can't help but go on. With pieces of your children floating around inside of it. Little fishes in the ocean that created them. That will always contain them.

I will not be going to the beach this weekend. I will stay home and hydrate and sleep eight hours each night and prepare for my court date this week (even a witch has the right to address the court). And the next time my toes are buried in the sand, my baby will be with me, body and soul.