A Shabbos walk with friends in through the looking glass.

On Shabbos afternoon, we take a somewhat impromptu walk through the neighborhood to the high school with the parking lot that towers over the neighborhood, offering views all the way down to the monuments.

The men walk ahead, their sleeping children strapped to them in carriers, David half a step behind.

That’s what I see before me as I listen to the women, half a step behind, confiding in one another about postpartum blood clots.

I fear this scene will be forever seared in my memory. David and I, together with our friends, and yet somehow utterly separate from them, their lives now as mythical to me as a child who looks on in awe at adolescence blooming into adulthood.

What once felt, in time, inevitable, now often seems impossible. Sometimes it’s even hard to remember that I was pregnant (that I, too, know much about blood clots).

This pain permeates everything; even moments, like this walk, that I once would have longed for, loved. I hate it.

Last updated February 07, 2018