226. Tender and Strong - Nell Diamond
Frida Kahlo, El venado herido (The Wounded Deer), 1946
I watched my body shift and grow like a gardener tending to a rose bush. I fed her bread and butter and sweet, syrupy lemonade and plates of cucumbers dusted with salt.
At 13-years-old, my body felt like an enemy.
I sat on the floor of my tub with the bright lights blaring and willed myself different. I hated the long, tangled hair, the skin so pale it showed blue veins, the flesh that hung over the waistband of my Miss Sixty jeans. I fought my body with celery and cold sliced turkey. I plucked and brushed and cried when she wouldn’t bend. Humanity spilled out of me and I mopped it up hungrily, desperate to fit neatly into the world.
Seventeen years later, I sat in a cold room on the Upper East Side and watched two dark circles appear on an ultrasound screen. Twins. “High risk,” said the doctor with the cat-eye liner. “This will be difficult.” I walked along Seventh Avenue that afternoon and begged my body for forgiveness. I begged her to find the strength to bring me my babies.
For nine months, I multiplied, my cells dancing. My skin stretched to fit two brains, two hearts, twenty fingers and toes. By September, my organs huddled close, like lovers in the winter. I was round like a balloon, like a beach ball, like a planet spinning through time and space.
I watched my body shift and grow like a gardener tending to a rose bush. I fed her bread and butter and sweet, syrupy lemonade and plates of cucumbers dusted with salt. I held her close even when the vomiting felt endless, even when I had to sleep sitting up. Mostly I stayed out of the way and let her get to work. I trusted this sturdy thing with a mind of its own, these mounds of flesh and blood.
Together, we made it to October. On the day I gave birth I felt an other-worldly sense of purpose. I was so certain of my body’s ability to power through.
In a room with twenty doctors and nurses, I closed my eyes and curled my spine and pushed with everything in me until I met my babies. Twelve pounds of life sprung into the air. When I held their sticky bodies on my chest, I felt hot joy like a middle school fever dream. My body was open and raw and ravaged but she kept me breathing, kept me awake to feel the warm breath of my two babies on my neck.
Today I rejoice in the deep purple gashes on my hips and thighs, the black wiry hairs, the bones that still feel fragile and soft. My body is a tender thing and she forgave me for not trusting her.
- Nell Diamond
