Starting With Love

There is so much to say about motherhood, why not start with something as simple as the topic of love?

Tee-hee.

Three days ago, I celebrated my first Mother's Day.  It was a really special day, and it was sunny and lovely and all the things a day in mid-May should be.  I was taken by surprise, actually, at how much I contemplated the meaning of the day.  Mother's Day isn't just a busy post office and flower shop day.  It is an opportunity to truly reflect upon what it means to care for another life from the ground up. 

And so I wondered: how do I love my child?

I know it's not wrong to say that I am still sorting that out.  It's only been five months, and I am certain it takes the rest of a mother's life to answer that question.  I think what I believed before having a child, though, is that there is this overwhelming love that pours over a mother when she first sees her child, and it oozes out of every pore, and it is real and pure and unlike anything else.

Maybe it's just me, but my reaction to this new relationship has been a bit more like the spherical baby toy where the child tries to find the right-shaped hole for the object to fit through.  I keep trying to categorize it, as in, "Nope, it's not that kind of love."  It's not romantic.  It's not religious.  It's not even so much familial. 

I love my baby, but when I say that, it doesn't quite feel true--I think because I've never known this kind of "love" before.  You know--the kind of love where you get every type of bodily fluid spewed or sprayed or burped upon you.  The kind of love where your arms are getting really ripped from holding and swinging and carrying.  The kind of love where you do a lot of song and dance routines (literally).

And maybe that is exactly it.  It's a bodily love formed and shaped with every wipe of a cloth, every feeding given, every hair pulled, every zerbert on the belly, every song sung, every toy picked up, every tear cried.   

This love is unlike anything else.  And to be honest, sometimes it's kind of gross.  But it is amazing how quickly muscles and fibers and ligaments learn how to convey it. 

A Birth Story, Part II

Oh, baby.

The nurse came in and so did my doctor.  I was tired already, and I really, really wanted the whole thing to be over with.  In retrospect, it was this very feeling that made me feel like it was time to push even though, maybe, it wasn't.

I say that it maybe wasn't time to push because I did it for almost four hours.  Baby was low, very low.  I had strong contractions.  But I couldn't quite get baby out. 

My doctor asked me if I "knew how to push."  I said no, and she proceeded to tell me how to do it.  I feel regretful about this, bitter almost, because how they told me to do it, how they told me to breath, was not what I wanted.  I remember the nurse holding my leg in this very awkward position, and when it was time to push with a contraction, I--almost humorously now, thinking back on it--mostly just noticed how much I didn't like how she was pushing my leg back.  Nevermind everything else.  That leg hold stays vivid in my memory.

I know I asked the nurse if my head was going to explode.  And I know my doctor was getting frustrated because she was exhausted from a weekend on call.  I know my husband was so excited and proud.  And I also knew, a little over an hour in, that this baby was not coming out unassisted.

I just knew it.  But I pushed for nearly another three hours.  I want to say "we," "we" pushed, because I felt anything but alone in that time.  I felt like in the singular agony of those hours, that everyone I know and have known was there.  This is the first time I am realizing this feeling, but it is true.

In perfecting the memory of my son's birth, here's how things went: I asked the doctor for a break.  I stood up and moved around.  I opened more, and felt the feeling of not wanting to do anything else in the world but push the baby out.  And I did, and I did it in once piece, with triumph.

Here's how it really happened.  It still felt like the best feeling in the world when it was just done.  But I didn't ask for a break...I asked for help.  And out came the forceps and then out came my baby, at 7:43 on a Monday morning.  And he was perfect, watching him from across the small room, hearing slight tiny cries as they suctioned his lungs, being so surprised at how fine his features were, how simply beautiful he was.

The forceps were my saving grace, even though the word sometimes arouses little gasps of fear, and even though in part because of them, I needed lots and lots of repair and stitches and healing.

I told Eric to go over to see Abe.  I continued to watch, still as could be as the doctor did his work.  I was so relieved.  I said, "I just had a baby!"  The people in the room with us were doing their jobs, and I'm glad they were.  But I had just been through something miraculous. 

I held Abe after a little while.  My arms were very weak and it was hard to do it for very long.  He was so beautiful.  Truly. 

**

In the months that have passed since December 5th, I have played over it all in my head.  It has been difficult for me to process how Abe was delivered, how nearly impossible it was for me to push him out.  What does that say about me as a woman?  Why didn't I want to let go of the baby inside?  What if I had been more forceful, more like an animal, in my voice?  What if there had been no forceps, no alternatives, no help? 

It is with a great deal of grace that these questions have begun to fade away, lost in the work of being a mother.  Another version of my self was born that morning along with Abe.  I meet her anew each day.

A Birth Story, Part I

I called upstairs to my husband.  Either I had peed my pants or my water had just broken.  When I saw that whatever the fluid was that had soiled my jeans and underwear was green, I figured it meant that labor had started.  Just like it does in the movies, but I was thankfully in the comfort of my own basement instead of at Target.

The green meant that baby boy had done a little business in the womb.  He pooped.  He was ready to come out, and I guess he just couldn't hold it any longer.  We called my doctor, and she said I should come in to the hospital right away so they could monitor how baby was doing.  We finished packing the suitcase and gathering up the things we thought we would need with enthusiasm, excitement.  We made phone calls in the car on the way there, and I sent text messages with hands trembling and a big smile on my face. We were going to meet our baby.  It was going to happen, like, really soon. 

We got to the hospital and made it to our room.  My parents arrived a short time later, and by then I had started having contractions.  Light ones, the kind that made me pause mid-sentence, but that I could still walk and breathe and relax through (by holding on to something).

I heard all through pregnancy that contractions feel like really bad menstrual cramps.  Maybe at first they do.  But as things progress, at least in my memory, it's different than that.  It's like when someone gives you a snakebite on your arm (holds your arm with both hands tightly and twists them away from each other) but instead of hands doing the twisting, it's a wood clamp.  And it's positioned on your back and abdomen.

I was in early labor for four or five hours.  Then the contractions started coming in waves.  Harder.  Tighter.  Consuming.  Completely.  I sat on a ball and Eric squeezed and squeezed my back.  I asked for a little something to take the edge off.  The drug helped me relax between contractions.  By "relax" I mean that I saw lots of pretty colors, and what the waves of pain looked like, and for some reason I have this image in my head of having seen a school hallway with lockers. 

I had planned on "no drugs. natural pain management only, please."  Meh.  In the heat of it all, I understood the question I had wondered about, arrogantly now I see, during pregnancy. Why would a woman want to cut herself off from the true experience of labor?  Because it really fucking hurts.

I was laboring in the zone.  Sounds escaping only during contractions, big moans.  Eventually I needed to be checked to see how far I had progressed.  I was close to ten centimeters, but not quite there.  From there on, I lay on the bed.  Almost as perfectly still as I could be.  Everything I had read said, "Move as much as you can and change positions during labor."  I couldn't.  I just wanted to be right where I was.  Silent.  Squeezing Eric's hand when the contractions came.  Letting my body open.

They say you will know when it is time to push.  I think I thought I had that feeling.  I did, with a few contractions, feel this "Oh God" well up inside of me and take over.  So I said it was time, thirteen hours after being in the basement and calling up to Eric.

President's Day

In honor of today's holiday, a photo collage of my son and his very presidential name:

Bethlehem

Last week I attended my Sister Mary's funeral.  Sister Mary was my Great Aunt, my Grandma's sister.  We called her "Sister Mary" because she was a Dominican nun for seventy-three of her ninety-six years.

Sister Mary had a bright, chirpy voice.  I always remember her being very upbeat and positive, saying very often that something or other was "Just like Bethlehem."  Sister could also be very persistent, especially when she wanted you to have something, be it candy, a trinket, a Catholic-themed craft, or a bologna sandwich.

My Sister Mary's turquoise cross.

In her later days, Sister lost her sight and then her hearing.  She was confused and well, ninety-six years old.  She died at the convent in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

When I walked into the chapel where Sister's funeral was to be held, I found myself a little surprised, somehow,  by the sight of the white casket.  A little surprised when my mom asked me and the other ladies to come up and adjust the pall on the casket once it was closed.  A little surprised that we, Sister's family, had reserved seats in the front rows of chairs.

Maybe it was because I hadn't been to a funeral in over ten years that I was startled by these things. But I think that some of it had to do with the fact that my life has been consumed over the past year with new life.

As the service began and I rocked my two-month-old baby boy in his car seat, I felt a touch of invincibility.  Like a little, "Come and get us, death! I'd like to watch you try!"  Foolish, I know.  But my pregnancy hormones have barely worn off and I am so caught up in new smiles and little clothes and this miraculous fresh start.  I can't blame myself for thinking, just for a minute, that somehow, my son and I are going to live and live and live.

It wasn't until my other aunt eulogized Sister that the significance of it all really hit me.  She reminded us, very simply, that death is messy.  And in a flash of memories from the not-so-distant past, I thought: so is birth.  The messiest, most painful, absurd, surreal, wonderful thing I have ever been through in my life.   

I brought Abe into the world, and I was reminded at Sister's funeral that there is nothing, nothing I can do to keep him--or myself--from experiencing the difficulty of death.  And while I feel like, "Well, I shouldn't be thinking about that sort of thing now," it was hard not to as we said goodbye to Sister.

At the same time, I also can't help but think how beautiful it was to bring a baby to a funeral.  A reminder of where we all began.  A symbol of the promise of life.

The Walk

A few weeks ago, a tragedy struck the little high school I used to work at in Salt Lake City, Utah.  One of our seniors died after the car she was driving went off an embankment.  I never had this lovely young woman as a student, but I can remember her face and smile shining in the hallways and in our classroom areas.  She was a dedicated student who was very involved in the science research opportunities at our school.  She had a light in her.  She was on the cusp.

"Teen dies in car crash" is, sadly, not a new headline.  It happens all the time.  Schools cope with the aftermath by bringing in grief counselors and holding memorial services.  Many, many hearts are broken.

What makes this tragedy so startling, however, is the fact that this student didn't actually die as a result of the car accident.  Her body was found many yards away from her car, in a field.  To my knowledge, medical examiner reports showed that she did not die from trauma caused by the crash, and she did not have any drugs or alcohol in her system.  She didn't have a heart attack or an asthma attack.  There were no signs of foul play.  She went off the embankment, got out of her car, started walking, then collapsed and passed away.

I share this story because I have been thinking about this student and my former students and colleagues a lot since it happened.  It all seems so senseless, so impossible to understand--especially without any answers, without any science to prove or even posit the truth. 

All I have been able to do--all anyone has been able to do--is to just sit with the fact that the death of this seventeen-year-old is a mystery.  Through this, I have discovered that we can also be with her in her final walk.  To imagine what she experienced between the time her car stopped and the moment she collapsed.  I imagine the fear and the loneliness she could have felt.  Her breath.  The invisible mountains to the east.  What could have been done to help her had anyone been there in those moments.

Yet, it is so difficult to stay with her there.  I want to get her away, pull her from the car, back up the embankment, and safely back home and to school.  I want to relieve her of any pain she was feeling, give her life and strength to make it through.  But the reality is that nothing can be done.  And in my attempts to save her, I leave no space for the possibility that maybe she didn't feel any of those things.  Maybe she was perfectly calm.  Peaceful.  Maybe she just knew. 

So I take away this: a lesson for my life that teaches me how to be with someone in the moments where all you want to do is save them and bring them to a better place.  When you want to say: get the hell out of this relationship.  Or: quit the job that is making you miserable.  Or: stop smoking.  Or: you should do it this way.  Or: go see a counselor.  Or: move on.  So often, it is hard to be with another when he is taking the walk.  It is hard for us to be still, to be quiet, to just be with what is.

The truth is that maybe what this person most needs is to walk this walk.  Maybe what this person needs is to feel what comes up with each step.  Maybe this walk is the only way, and our only task in the process is to be a witness--a witness with presence and quiet support. 

For our student who is no longer here, being with her in my heart and mind during that last walk opens up a powerful space in me for compassion and patience and overcoming fear.  May her final moments do the same for others.

In honor of their daughter, Lindy Clark's parents have set up a scholarship fund through her former high school, the Academy for Math, Engineering, and Science in Salt Lake City, Utah.  The scholarship will be awarded to a promising female scholar at the AMES's award banquet in the spring.  If you are interested in making a donation, send checks payable to AMES to: 

Academy for Math, Engineering, and Science, 5715 South 1300 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84121

  


 

Big & Small

A wise person I know taught me how to get in touch with the way my body feels inside: where I store emotions, where I feel those emotions, how my inner body and heart feel when presented with a particular thought or situation.  She passed on to me something she was taught, which is, when you notice your mind getting carried away in thought or despair or worry or anything, you stop and ask yourself, "Where are my feet?"  This little moment of pause not only enhances your practice of cultivating presence and consciousness, but it also puts you right smack dab back in your body.

Our bodies are our friends--one's greatest, longest friend.  Our culture teaches us in many overt and subtle ways not to trust our bodies, but to instead rely on our mind's judgment of things.  Learning to listen to the body, at least in my experience, has taught me so much about who I really am and what I really want and need in my life.  It has taught me about what makes me happy.

This happiness I feel in my body I equate with a feeling of expansiveness.  Sometimes that feeling is very obvious, very easy to notice.  There is cheer there, a sense that I am light, a realization that I want to live and live fully.  Sometimes that big, expansive feeling is much more subtle, more of a calm hum or an absence of shadow than a "Ce-le-brate good times, come on!" type of feeling.  The difficult part about this is that it's just sometimes hard to pay attention to that feeling, or to really, truly trust it.  Because--let's be honest here--sometimes the things that make us happy and the choices we must make that are best for us are the things we avoid, the things we are in denial about, the things that might hurt others we care for, the things that might make us seem "weird" or "strange" or "different."  We all want to be loved and to fit in and be good.  We also all, at our core, want to be who we are.

The point in my life when I was confronted most overtly with this new, bodily understanding of myself came during the time I was separated from my first husband, and we were trying to figure out where to go from there.  I remember very clearly practicing "Where are my feet?" a lot then, and trying to listen to my body because, to be frank, I had no where else to go.  I was stuck.  No one could tell me what to do in this situation but my own self. 

I can recall the sensations even now.  Quieting myself.  Bringing up a picture or thought in my mind of what it would be like to stay in my relationship.  The feeling of slight panic.  Heat gathering in the folds of my body. A darkness.  A sinking feeling.  Then, the converse.  What it would be like to just let it all go.  There was a calm hum.  No cymbals, synthesizers, or disco balls.  Just...me.

It took a time of continually "checking in" with these feelings to trust them.  I would, during the course of a day, convince myself that the choice I knew I had to make couldn't possibly be the choice I was going to make.  But then, I'd quiet myself again, bring it all to the forefront...and there the calm would be.  I was confronted with it.  It didn't go away.  And it was my body telling me this.  Not a family member, husband, counselor, priest, or book.  It was just me. 

Where else can you turn when you already know the truth?  We try a lot of things.  But I believe our bodies have a way of always re-presenting us with it in some way, shape, or form.  Our job is to be brave enough to ask the question, and then willing to feel the answer.

Trust the things that make you feel big.  Move on from the things that make you feel small.  It isn't always easy.  But everyone has the right to feel expansive, no matter what that might mean.  No one deserves to sink.