I Heard the School Email Ping and My Body Changed First

Dear Delyara, I had not even opened it. The sound happened, I saw the school name light up on my phone, and immediately my chest tightened before my thoughts had caught up properly. That’s the part I think people miss about motherhood. It is not only the events. It is the anticipatory body. By the time I opened the message, it was something ordinary. A reminder. A timing change. Nothing terrible. Still, the reaction had already happened. The body had already braced. And once a body has braced often enough, even ordinary pings start sounding like emotional work. I put the phone face down after reading it and carried on making tea as if none of that had happened. But it had.