Stones

I walk looking for stones. It is Monday, two in the afternoon, and instead of sitting in front of my computer in the room at the back of my house, I am here, walking on the shore of the Charles River, which divides Boston and Cambridge, looking for stones.

 It is the middle of winter, and the frozen water of the river is covered in a delicate layer of snow. It’s cold and the sun shines strongly. I’m walking without a mask, enjoying this small liberty in the middle of the violence this wave of COVID encompasses us with. Once again, we are distanced, again we are confined, again we are watching life from the window. I find a medium, plain stone. Without hesitating, I take off my gloves and I take it between my fingers and throw it into the river with force. The rock falls and bounces, as if all my anger and rage do not matter. Then it slides elegantly until it fuses with the landscape.

 I smile, I feel like this river, which has stones fall with violence and it does not break. It does not flinch. But today, in this moment, when I am finally alone, I need to be broken, I need to break. You can’t repair anything that isn’t broken first.

 The first time this happened to me was six years ago. It was a Friday in December. My partner and I eased our nerves watching a mid-afternoon television show in the waiting room, surrounded by women and children, women with stomachs of all sizes, as if they were phases of the moon. We enter a room with dim light, where little by little the machine that massaged my partner’s stomach started to clear the Babelic confusion from its insides to show the life that was growing inside. Seconds pass and what were tears of joy, little by little turned bitter. Now they try to stay in the eyes, clinging to their eyelids for as long as possible. Non-viable, those are the words that the doctor used when she explained to us that life, the idea of that life, this time, would not be.

 One of every four pregnancies result in a miscarriage, but they are losses that are often are carried in silence, full of pain and shame. Like many men, sometimes I prefer to keep these things inside, for fear of not being understood, to be left with stories of fate or common phrases that will cause more anger. The process is slow and while the idea of that life is extinguished, a portal opens where life and death find each other, they greet each other and look at each other closely. In that natural, biological and violent process in which the unviability of that life left, my partner is almost taken away.

 Men know very little about women, about their bodies, about their processes. In this patriarchal and capitalistic culture, we learn as children to see women as objects, to desire their bodies, without caring to know about their menstruation, cramps or hormonal changes. We learn that it is them who need to take care of themselves, to be careful with what they say, but we do not learn about consent, nor do we understand much about what happens to them when the idea of a life forms or when the idea of a life terminates. Though, we feel with the right to tell them what to do and what not to do with their bodies, we invent laws to control them, social norms to shame them and sayings to justify the violence that kills them every day. Those bodies that we desire and want to touch, but never want them to be autonomous or do their will, here on earth as in heaven.

 I find a stone with a promising point. I am filled with energy, and I throw it with all the force I have with me. I have the urge to shout out, like the tennis players. When falling, the rock penetrates the layer of snow and ice, generating a small, expansive wave. It is the first time that I am given permission to cry, as if something inside me, little by little, also starts to surrender.

 This is the second time that it has happened to me, that it has happened to us. The idea that a life that is extinguished, because biology does not fight with anyone, even if one wants to fight with it, to demand explanations, to give dogmatic or pragmatic arguments. Life is very perfect for those things. It is or it is not. And in this case, again, it won’t be.

 Now I know what comes next, the anguish of waiting, of following hour by hour contractions, pains, blood, lots of blood. Next comes the post-loss stress, or maybe the anxiety. Hourly calls to the doctors, more blood exams, monitoring hormone levels, crying a little, sleeping a little.

 With the passing of days, the idea of that life as sadness goes away. This time it is different because between those two ideas that did not come to be, there is a life that does exist, that grew in that same womb. A life that arrived on a holiday, that came into the world with one arm raised, ready for the fight, in that same hospital that I cannot enter because COVID was lurking, and I looked at from time to time while looking for stones. A life that talks, sings, shouts, and refuses to eat broccoli. A life, a fulfilled promise, a reliable and undeniable sign, of the alchemy of life.

 Four months have passed, and the snow has stayed behind. With shyness, but without rest, spring takes what it finds in its path, including the spaces in between the pavement, filling them with green. The pain has subsided, I no longer feel so broken and instead, there is a part of me that suffers the pain of others, that pain which I do not know where it resides, but I know it exists. The pain of those people who search for the same stones to throw into the river, to break themselves. What about, if we start, by breaking this painful silence of loss?