Until I became a mom I never quite knew the things that could make me become an emotional slobbering mess. Most recently it was a bag of frozen breastmilk. Not just any frozen bag of breast milk, but the last of the “baby milk” that had been stashed away. You know what I’m talking about, right? The milk that’s the color of new morning sunshine. Milk that’s dotted with thick creamy fat globules throughout. The milk that’s so dense you couldn’t even shine a light through it if you tried. The milk that you pumped out when the sleep deprivation was killing you and you thought you’d never be able to form a complete sentence again. The milk that fed your baby until their thighs were so thick they couldn’t fit into pants and their neck melted into their head and shoulders. The milk that represents a journey you took that may have rocked you to your core and made you question your sanity. That milk, that’s the milk that led me down an emotional path and left me crying in a room by myself while I re-lived every emotional moment I’d had with breastfeeding. 

That frozen bag of milk represented a really deeply emotional time in life that taught me not only how hard it is to be a mom, but how deep a mom will go for their child. That bag of milk was full of pain, sadness, anger, frustration, and fatigue. But that bag of milk was also full of smiles, bonding time, support, and success. That bag of milk was a literal physical thing I could hold that represented what made me know I could achieve at my personal version of motherhood. That bag of milk held the sustenance for my newborn child and everything that came with it. That bag of milk felt like it held the life of my child within its plastic walls. And with that bag of milk being the last of the newborn phase, made me stare square into the face that I no longer had a newborn, or even a baby. Of course I hadn’t had a newborn for quite some time, but this bag of milk was a physical artifact from that time and once it’s gone, it’s gone. I don’t know how to quite put it into words why that bag of milk felt so important, but it did. 

Once that milk is used, there’s nothing left from that time period except memories. Sure memories are wonderful and photos last forever, but it’s not the same as something that physically came from you that provided life to your child. So for now the bag of milk remains as as a moment literally frozen in time. One day, when I am emotionally ready, I know the milk will need to go, but today is not the day and tomorrow is not the day either.