Heavy Lifting: Fifty Years of Mothering

I’m impressed you could carry that baby with one arm up the stairs.

The baby actually has two arms but I get your drift. You’re surprised an old lady can carry a 24 pound baby on her hip and still hold on to the banister because she (not the baby) is at heightened risk of falling due to her advanced age.

Well, I didn’t want to get into all that. Basically, I was just kind of awed.

By me climbing stairs with a baby? The 74-year old women in Ukraine are hauling ammunition hidden in 50 pound bags of potatoes to the front and making potato dumplings when they get there. Or whatever it is they make in Ukraine, I don’t know.

You sound envious.

Envious? Like I could be a really great old lady if I lived somewhere Russia was trying to take over? If I had a cat and a bubushka?

I notice that you actually have a cat.

I do. He often runs figure eights in front of me when I’m coming up the stairs. It’s an added degree of difficulty which doesn’t get taken into account.

You sound like you may have impressed yourself coming up those stairs, carrying that dead weight of a sleeping baby with the cat doing its thing and all.

I’m impressed that I got the baby in her crib without her waking up. It’s the same mark of achievement as fifty years ago when I started all of this carrying business. Enduring glory. At least in my own mind.

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Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash