📼

the saga continues

if there’s one thing he’s going to do at the end of the world, it’s pant like a puppy dog (and moan and gasp and mumble and just generally be a passive aggressive diva and yell in lowercase)

Now, honestly, all I can think about is Joyce with newborn Jonathan. Up all night, alone, doing her best to quiet and comfort him so that his crying didn't wake Lonnie. Crying softly to herself because her hormones are still out of wack and her brain just got rewired and because honestly, she's lost all sense of self. More than anything, because she feels crushing guilt and hopelessness over the life she knows she can probably never give that beautiful little baby in her arms. But when he does quiet and look up at her, because she's still the only thing in his world, all she can think about is how this tiny person is hers. Not Lonnie's, never Lonnie's. Hers. And that's what gets her through the day and the fresh guilt in the morning over having to drop her eight-week-old off with a sitter because she has a double shift at Melvald's and an overdue electric bill.

But even in those early moments, I think Joyce and Jonathan became a team. Not because he could do anything for her yet, but because they were already surviving the same life together. She was the only safety he knew, and he was the reason she kept dragging herself out of bed every morning, no matter how little sleep she’d gotten or how impossible the day ahead of her felt. Lonnie could frighten her, belittle her, make her feel small - but he could never touch the part of her that belonged to Jonathan.

And I think Jonathan grew up feeling that distinction long before he had words for it. There was Lonnie, and then there was them. He learned the sound of Joyce’s footsteps, the strain in her voice, when she needed him to be quiet or helpful or stay close by. Joyce tried to shield him from everything she could, where as Jonathan, almost instinctively, began trying to make things easier for her.

It was a bond built from enormous love, but also from necessity. And that is what makes it so tragic. Joyce never wanted Jonathan to feel responsible for her. She wanted to be his mother, his protection, the soft place for him to land, the one who carried all of the burden. But somewhere along the way, Jonathan began carrying it with her anyway. By the time Will came along, they were no longer only mother and son. They were co-conspirators, protectors, the two people quietly holding the family together.