Bliss

Project Blog It

The first thing that came into my mind when I saw the topic Bliss was the sky. I am mesmerized by the blue that I can only begin to understand through the word azule. I can spend hours watching the creativity of the clouds, and must stop to look every time the air, water, and light paint the sky at sunset. I am in utter amazement and bliss at these moments. As the days passed, I began to recall other moments in time when I felt that pure, secure, and joyful feeling. This is the list that began to form:

Lying on a quilt palette in my grandmother’s living room barely awake smelling brewed coffee and buttered toast hearing my mother’s and grandmother’s voice, but not being able to make out the words.
Touching the blue velvet pillow that my grandmother forbade us to touch.
Dissipating clouds with the power of my mind at the end of my teen-age years with a boy that changed my life.
Piling up on the couch with my daughter and my dog watching Winnie-the-Pooh.
Morning naps.
Rainy Saturday afternoons with a delicious book and nothing else to do.
Shmonkey’s lemon curd with fresh strawberries.
My mother’s banana pudding.

On Wednesday 9 July 2008, two events happened that made me realize my ultimate feeling of bliss. Separately, they were important events. Together they were significant, if only to me. First, my friend gave birth to beautiful baby boy. Second, there was an attack on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. My daughter is in Istanbul for six weeks this summer. After I knew she was completely safe (as if we can ever know that), I began to think about what ifs, what I would do, how much I love her, and about the day she was born.

When I was pregnant, I knew I was going to be a terrible mother. The joke at the time was “the only thing domestic about me was that I lived in a house.” I worried, I wondered, I had this crazy dream that the doctor handed me my baby, I put it in my purse, and forgot about her. Still in the dream, someone would ask me about my visit to the doctor, and I would say, “Oh, I had a baby. She is in my purse somewhere.” I would dig around, find her, and she would have this look on her face that really made me feel like a terrible mother. I would feed her something, put her back in my purse, and forget about her until the next person asked me questions. This happened several times in my dream, and the dream still haunts me.

In real life, when she was born – with no epidural like I was promised – my doctor put her into my arms, and I was overwhelmed with bliss. I experienced such a feeling of peace, security, and joy. I knew no matter what happened over the course of our lives that between us everything would always be okay. That is the way I feel when I see the sky, touch something beautiful, smell the rain, taste affection, and hear a lullaby.

Next week's prompt: describe your god

Please visit the companion piece over at Shmonkey's Jungle. In addition, Skajlab has written a piece on this week's topic at Crash Course, and so has Daisy over at Fire Flower.