Mother Hips and a Modest Lower Back

Excepts from a piece for my Writing Body class, a 'gossip column' about my body.

I remember when my hips were first growing in. Like a tadpole sprouting legs, I wobbled and wavered, I ran into doorways, I bore the bruises. My hips spoke in a meek girl’s voice. One who had been backhanded far too many times by men.

Then I learned to walk. My hips are my mother. She speaks to me in a voice deep and strong. In a voice booming and very female and husky and androgynous. She scares the man in me. She scares him with her sureness of strength. She cradles me when I wish to hide. She soothes me when I fear the extra weigh I put on. She supports me, she widens. She pets my forehead with cool hands and widens as I push push push, breathe breathe, scream.

My hips are the woman in me. She cups in her cradle balance and tells my body to obey. She holds the emotions that cry, and in her other hand, those that laugh. She knows me better than I could ever see for myself.

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I never notice my lower back until I lay down. That space right above the two dimples created by my pelvis bone ending and protruding, it never touches the ground. My butt and rib cage permanently suspend that dead space forever above the earth, even when the rest of my body is down. Even my breasts lay flat. And again, when I am sitting, when the rest of my body can relaxing, my lower back is ever working, straining to support my upper weight with its delicate column of vertebrae.

This place is strong and vulnerable all at once. I hardly ever see it, but the skin there is soft with a thin layer of blonde hairs that catch even the slightest breeze up my shirt. And here, the skin aches to be touched. It longs to feel warm fingers gliding in gentle circular motions over and over and over… It asks the least from me, my lower back: this simple touch in exchange for holding me up.