That first year, you were an extension of me. Attached to my breast, slack bodied in the nook of my arm, lying directly on top of me while we both slept, our breathing synchronized. I was nineteen then and we lived at your grandmother’s house. Your father worked as a line cook and was gone late into the evening. When he was home, it was still me you wanted–the warm lump of flesh who carried your food. I felt not as though I’d had a baby but rather that I’d grown a new limb.

The itch came like clockwork. Early afternoon when the sun loomed high overhead and the dogs began to pace the perimeter of the fence like feral beasts and my legs numbed from sitting in a rocking chair nursing, nursing, nursing until both teats went soft, I would get the itch to leave the house. In a frenzy, I put you in a fresh diaper, retrieved the stroller from the hallway closet, buckled you in and we were off.

You sat, tiny body bundled up and cushioned like a dwarf prince while I hoisted the stroller down the small flight of stairs leading to the driveway. You learned to love stroller walks as much as I did, and I consider this a kindness of the gods. I needed those stroller walks with a fevered intensity.

Before I became a mother, I was a runner. I ran and ran and ran. On my lunch breaks at work, in between classes, at night when I couldn’t wind down. I ran because when I sat still for too long, the thoughts and feelings caught up with me, piled on top of each other, pressed into my ribcage, threatened to implode me from the outside in.

In those early months of motherhood, I had taken the shape of a rocking chair. Spine curved; shoulders hunched in the position I nursed you in. During those walks, I began to reassemble into the shape of myself, not my former pre-baby self, but into the woman I was becoming.

I walked and then I ran. And ran and ran. One mile and then two, four miles and then six, eight miles and then ten. My strength felt tangible and all my own, like something I could cup in my palms and feel the weight of.

The change wasn’t just in my body, but in my mind. I cherished the opportunity to think my own thoughts while you thought yours. I memorized the front porches of the houses we passed and the faces of the people who lived there. I swooned at the twirl of weeping willows, the smell of wet earth, the rush of water raging through a canal.

I like to think you took mental notes too. Your eyes, wide open in that austere baby way as you took in the sights around us. At first, you were quiet, then you found your voice. While I walked, you babbled. Dadadadadada. You chirped at the spray of sprinklers and giggled when we rolled over bumps.

When you got older, we stopped at parks. I pointed to lady bugs and cherry blossoms while you sank your hands into cold soil. I hung in a forward fold while you grabbed fistfuls of grass and hollered into ant dens like a miniature destroyer of worlds.

We both delighted. In the colors, the smells, the touch of the world outside our domestic bubble. In the time together and space apart—close enough to feel the warmth of one another’s presence, distant enough for a new sense of self to take root.