Owl Cottage

Not long before Cedar was born, I went on a writing residency for three weeks at Hedgebrook. Located on Whidbey Island, Hedgebrook is a paradise for women writers. Seven of us were each given our own cottage in the woods, complete with a large desk, comfy window seat, woodstove, sleeping loft, bathroom, and kitchenette. So much attention to detail is built into these cottages, from the stained-glass flowered window in the loft, to the wooden pegs used to hold together beams, to the owl carved into my wall. The cottages are spaced apart so that when you look out of your windows at night, you can see the light of at least one other cottage as a reminder of the community of women you are working within. At the same time, there is a sense of complete privacy as you go about your day. You are free to be alone and do what you want—and, naturally, I wanted to write. 

I’d wanted to go to Hedgebrook ever since I’d first applied back in 2000. Hedgebrook welcomes emerging and established writers, and has grown more and more competitive over time. I waited almost ten years-- gaining more faith in my voice and vision, honing my craft, and waiting for what felt like an ideal time in my life-- before I finally applied again, and to my delight, was accepted. 

When I applied last September, I was pregnant and due in late March. You can apply to stay for one to six weeks, anytime between February and November. So that left the month of February for a potential residency, which felt like it might be cutting it a little close to my due date. But who knew when I’d next have a chance to get away on my own for weeks at a time? And who knew how much writing I would manage to do as a new mom? Probably not very much. This could be my last chance to make a huge push on my newest writing project. And if I could take big strides with this project, then hopefully I’d be inspired to keep going once my son was born, in ways that I might not otherwise feel motivated. 

In my application, I said I would work on my project about a couple, Els and Frank, whom I grew up next door to, and how when Frank died, he left me their home, along with decades worth of their letters, journals, slides, and artifacts from their lives. I wanted to delve far enough into this project that I would have a stronger sense of what it was about-- beneath the surface, what underlying questions was I exploring, and what structure the story would inhabit.  I hoped to make enough progress on it that by the time my three weeks at Hedgebrook were up, I would not be able to abandon it, and I might be able to even call it a book.

I arrived on a Friday afternoon and was kindly shown around the fifty-some acres of fields, wetlands, gardens, woods, cottages, and other buildings. I looked forward to enjoying the bathhouse with its radiant heating, hand-painted tiles, private shower rooms, and old claw foot tub. The farmhouse was where us seven women would convene each night to be served a delicious meal prepared by a gracious chef, sitting around one table to listen to stories from each other’s lives. Our homes spanned from Cortez Island, B.C. to San Francisco; from Santa Cruz to rural Idaho; from San Antonio to L.A. We ranged in age from our late twenties to our sixties. We wrote novels, short stories, screenplays, spoken word, essays, and more. We were working on projects about Palestinians and their land, about growing up sixteen in Berkeley, about interracial marriage, about illness, about gangs in Texas who break out in song (a Mexican-American adaptation of Carmen), and then some. 

Most nights, after dinner, we’d retire to our cottages to continue writing, or to do whatever we chose to do. First, though, we’d pack our wicker basket full of homemade granola, fruit, eggs, coffee, cookies, dinner leftovers, jars of milk, and plastic containers filled with gourmet soups, sandwiches, quiches, and salads—breakfast and lunch for the next day. Everything was provided for us, and the farmhouse was always open for us to grab a few more cookies from the jar or check out the library filled with the works of alumni. I’d heard that some groups at Hedgebrook gathered after dinner for readings or critique sessions almost every night, and others didn’t. Ours opted to write at night more often than we’d socialize, but as the days went on, some would linger to chat or watch a movie in the cozy, pillow-laden living room of the farmhouse. A couple nights we also read to each other from our work to share more of ourselves, but not so much to seek a critique.

I was eight months pregnant and pretty tired by the time we were done with dinner each night, so most evenings I retired early to my cottage where I’d lie in bed, listen to music, and read old letters between Els and Frank. I felt the pressure of my impending due date and how much I hoped to accomplish in the three weeks I had at Hedgebrook. I knew my main purpose there was not to make new friends, as wonderful as the women were around me. 

Instead, I sank deep into my writing in a way that I hadn’t for years. I kept odd hours, sometimes sleeping in if I’d gone to bed late or gotten a poor night’s sleep, and other morning’s waking early, even before the first light. I rarely did this at home, and I loved the quiet concentration of those early morning hours, settling right into my work with a cup of tea at my side. Some mornings I heard the bard owls calling to each other from the limbs of the firs and cedars that surrounded, and one morning I looked up to find one staring at me through the window. This felt especially fitting, since I was staying in “Owl Cottage,” though I was not the only one to whom the owls paid a visit. One night an owl swooped down and picked the black hooded scarf off of my fellow resident Tamar’s head. Amalia got out her broom and started yelling at the owl up in the tree to give it back, which it eventually did. After that night, we took more care to be aware of our surroundings during those hunting hours of dusk, as we set out down the path with our empty baskets towards the farmhouse for dinner.

What a gift to be freed from all responsibilities-- cooking, cleaning, phone calls, and emails for three weeks. What spaciousness begins to open, a different kind of relationship to the unfolding passage of a day. Most days, I’d work for three or four hours, then read over what I’d written as I ate lunch, then go on a walk down to the wetlands of Deer Lagoon and the beach at Useless Bay. If it was raining and I didn’t feel like venturing far, I briefly wandered the wooded trails behind my cottage, inhaling the damp moss and spring’s first shades of green, before returning to stoke the coals in the woodstove which kept my cottage warm. Then, I’d make another cup of tea and work for a few more hours until the dinner hour of five rolled around, for which I was always hungry. I liked how an early dinner hour allowed for enough time afterwards to still put in a good night of work. 

Before Hedgebrook, even though I had plenty more time, I was happy if I put in a few hours of writing a day. Chores, cooking, shopping, research, emails, phone calls, job searches, publishing quests, and the ways in which so many things at home can distract and clutter the mind ate up so much my time. Now, with the exception of the couple hours of chatting over dinner and a nightly call to my husband, my entire day was devoted to the muse. Thankfully, too, there was no internet in the cottages; you had to go to the main farmhouse or to the “pumphouse” to check your email, and they discouraged you from doing this too often. While at Hedgebrook, I only checked my email about once a week, and weaned myself completely from Facebook; I had no problem staying away. I felt myself eager to drop away from all the mental chatter that goes along with maintaining an online presence. My days felt long and full.

Three weeks passed quickly, and within this time I gained the confidence and vision to begin referring to my project as a book, receiving a wellspring of enthusiasm and support from the others for its potential. I churned out pages of new material, carefully edited and combed through old drafts, and slowly, a structure began to emerge. I was so thankful that I had decided to stay the full three weeks I was offered, instead of only staying two which I’d considered. But Hedgebrook turned out to be a perfect place to spend this last stage of my pregnancy. I ate incredibly well and felt so nourished by the food, by the women, by the extra wood stacked on my porch, the extra protein loaded into my basket, by the land, and by the understanding, respect, and care lavished on us as women writers. 

Never before did I feel so honored as a writer, so validated and understood. I’ve considered myself a writer and committed myself to this process and craft for fifteen years now, and yet, because I lack impressive publications, not to mention a book deal, I often still feel like I haven’t yet “arrived” at the level of “writerhood” that I aspire to. At Hedgebrook, however, I knew I had arrived. I knew that my application had been selected out of hundreds of talented women, that I deserved to be there, and that this was my time. My time to write, my time to trust, to celebrate and to flourish. The universe was giving me a clear message, a gift to inspire and counter all of the doubt and rejections I had otherwise plowed through to stay true to this path of writing. The universe had also given these other six women this gift, and together we could understand on some level all that it had taken for us to get here, without even having to share the intimacies of our story.

On my last morning at Hedgebrook I finally wrote in the journal in Owl Cottage. There were already ten or so journals on the shelf, filled with long rambling entries of those who had been there since the early nineties, when Owl Cottage was built. I’d read through almost all of them during my stay, filled as they were with interesting rants and revelations; with city girls who’d conquered their fear of the woods; with women who had bonded like sisters; and with others who felt misunderstood, left out, or resentful. For most of us, Hedgebrook had been an oasis of creativity and retreat, but there were also those for whom it did not live up to their expectations.

Fortunately, I had nothing but a positive experience at Hedgebrook. Yes, this was my time. Pregnant, on the cusp of motherhood and a whole new way of life. Welcoming these changes, at the same time that I reaffirmed my commitment to writing and to my beloved rhythms of solitary retreat. 

Tucked away in the letters between Els and Frank that I’d brought along to read, I’d found a couple postcards with my cabin’s namesake: the owl. Throughout my stay, I’d gazed at these owls, perched on the windowsill above my desk, the only adornment against the otherwise pleasingly empty walls. Now, on my last morning at Hedgebrook, before diving into the undoing process of packing and cleaning and goodbyes, I glued them into the journal. It felt right to leave them behind rather than to take them with me back to Seattle where they’d soon be forgotten again, tucked within the pages of some book. Then, with smooth flowing black ink, I took a breath and left my mark amidst the others, giving thanks to everything that had brought me here, and welcoming the next woman who would arrive.

Feeding Cedar

Cedar hasn’t been taking the bottle lately. This is troubling if I ever want to get away for more than a few hours at a time. He took it easily at first when he was around six weeks old and he quickly gulped down five ounces of my breast milk. But then we must have waited too long between tries, and the next time my husband offered it to him, he refused. Ever since then, it’s been a struggle. He might be coaxed to take a couple ounces over a couple hours, but mostly he’ll just play with the nipple, then spit it out—and that’s if he’s in a good mood. If he’s tired or hungry, he’ll howl and scream and finally, my mom or Matthew will call me to come home, whereupon I’ll rush to offer him my breast, poor baby, so hungry and upset he won’t even take it at first.

And then, he’s fine. It hasn’t been that long, so he’s not starving, and he’s not a baby to stay upset once his needs have been met. So he’ll go from crying and screaming to smiling and laughing within minutes.

I know it’s hard for my husband when Cedar won’t take the bottle from him, and when he sees how easy it is for me to placate him by offering him my breast. We don’t want him to learn that if he refuses the bottle, he’ll eventually (and in not too long) get the breast, so it’s best that I stay away during our attempts now, because it’s too hard for me to sit there and listen to him wail when we both know that I have what he wants. By that same token, I am not the ideal candidate to offer Cedar the bottle, because I would never last the hours it might take before he finally breaks down and takes it; I don’t know if I could even last for twenty minutes. It’s too hard when I’ve spent the first three months of my life doing everything in my ability to keep him from crying, to suddenly play tough love. Enforcing discipline has always been my weakness.

I don’t blame my baby for preferring and loving my breast. He came out of the womb with a natural instinct to root and suck, it was the very first thing that was offered to him after he was born, and ever since, he’s spent a great amount of each day at its side. Even though I’d taken a class in breastfeeding, I still was not prepared for how glued I’d be to that chair and boppy, how huge and full my breasts would become with milk, and how much a newborn baby needs to nurse. Cedar would often nurse for over an hour, and when he’d finish he’d be back on it within another hour or sooner. At night, I’d lie on my side and nurse Cedar in bed, but his latch was not always great, sometimes I’d finally get up and go sit in the living room after half an hour of him slipping and sliding off my breast, with me propped on my side, squeezing my breast with my hand to make a “nipple sandwich,” teasing his mouth open wide, and guiding his face in the right direction, all while trying to aim a flashlight at his mouth to aid the process, yet not shine it in his face so he’d wake up too much.

In the beginning, you had to feed your baby every two or three hours to ensure that they were gaining enough weight. Now, most nights I put him down around eight p.m., and he doesn’t wake until three a.m. for a quick snack in the dark. We no longer need the aid of a flashlight. Instead, all I do is wave my nipple in the area around his mouth and he will open wide and clamp on like a champ. Then he’ll wake again around seven for a longer feeding. During the day, though, Cedar still feeds every two hours, and sometimes more. I think I have an oversupply of milk, so he fills up fast on the “foremilk” which is less nutritious and sustaining, and doesn’t get as much of the “hindmilk” which would keep him going longer. But I also suspect that this boy just loves to nurse. It’s comforting to him, it’s how he feels safe and secure, and it’s what my breasts were made for. And after surviving the first month when it seemed I was nursing more often than I wasn’t, when his latch would sometimes hurt, I was getting clogged ducts, and when I was, frankly, sick of sitting in that chair, unable to do much else but surf Facebook—after surviving that first stage where nursing was more of a duty than a pleasure, I can now say that I enjoy nursing, that I love this special bond that I have with my baby, and that I already know it will be hard for me, and for him, the day we need to start giving this up.

What do I love about nursing? I love the fact that every nutrient Cedar needs to grow healthy and strong is stored inside my body; I love this symbiotic relationship, I love that we can go anywhere and I have what I need to provide for him. I love how easy it’s now become to rest his head in the crook of my arm, pull out my breast and nurse him, how we are no longer dependent on special nursing props, how his latch is now perfect no matter what, how we are old pros at this routine. And I love it when he stares in my eyes as he sucks, and sometimes pauses to break into a smile. I love the soft tickle of his mouth on my nipple. And how his mouth still moves in rhythmic sucking motions as he sleeps.

I also love how no one else but me can fill this role for him. I admit I felt a slight tinge of sadness the first time he took the bottle so quickly, sad to know that I could be so easily replaced. But mostly I was grateful, knowing that my future sanity would rest on his ability to take a bottle. Matthew was happy too, of course, that he could finally take part in this feeding routine, and be able to offer his son such an essential part of his life. I want Cedar to also associate my husband with nurturing and an ability to be fed. And I certainly don’t want it to be a struggle each time, and for Matthew to feel demoralized and rejected. So we need to keep working on the bottle, giving it to Cedar more frequently and deliberately, choosing a time of day when he is least tired and thus likely to refuse. Yet still I admit I am happy that Cedar will always prefer the breast, and that he will always associate mama with her unsurpassed ability to soothe and provide.

This might sound naïve, but I didn’t realize what a huge part of our life nursing would become. Matthew agrees, saying how breastfeeding is about so much more than just food, but more like medicine, for Cedar-- and for me. “You should write about how the umbilical cord never goes away,” he said when I told him I was writing this post. “Yes, it’s true. The phantom umbilical cord,” I nodded.

Nursing is the most intimate way of expressing the bond that exists between Cedar and I. At times, it can still feel like a tiring duty, yet now that we’re out of the exhausting, all night feedings, sore nipples, raw and ravaged stage, breastfeeding has become so much more of a welcome pleasure. A gentle, comforting ritual where the two bodies of mother and child, can, once again, join together as one.

Childish Delights

Before Cedar was born, I never knew babies very well. As a nanny, I’d cared for plenty of toddlers and preschoolers, but anything younger was still an abstract entity: cute, but slightly frightening. Delicate, fragile. Liable to cry if you held them wrong, or if they sensed that you weren’t comfortable.

This baby stage of motherhood was the one that I was the most unsure of, the one that was the most unknown. I’d never rushed to hold another’s baby, afraid that my inexperience would show itself quickly and that the parents would secretly be happy when I returned their child to their arms. But the learning curve is sharp and forgiving when you are with a child 24 hours a day. And I’ve quickly learned that it’s not the end of the world if you let their heads flop a little now and then when attempting some multi-tasking maneuver and that their necks aren’t that fragile. I’ve also learned that there is not just one way a baby likes to be held, and even if they have a preference, that preference is always changing. The best thing to do if they are fussing is often to switch their positions again and again, back and forth, rocking and bouncing and shushing, until you find something that works. You just keep experimenting-- and try to remember to trust your instincts-- in addition to all the advice you take in from people and books.

Before Cedar was born, I suspected that babies were pretty amazing, but I never knew this in my bones. Babies were cute, but I preferred interacting with two-, three-, or nine-year-olds, or even middle schoolers for that matter; all these other stages of childhood development were much more familiar. Since I’d never gotten the chance to get to know a particular baby intimately, and since babies can’t express who they are in ways that are as immediately apparent as older children can, I’d never gotten to know or even to sense the huge gift of getting to know the specific feeling and preciousness of a baby. Especially when that baby is your own.

Now, although it is too early to put into words the “personality” of this baby of mine except, I already know the feeling of my child, the spirit of this being that has arrived and that will eventually evolve into distinct character traits as he continues to learn how to express what he wants and who he is. Every day, every week, my baby continues to change, and every day this being delights me. I especially love our time together in the morning. After Cedar wakes around 7:00, I change his diaper, then bring him back to bed to feed him—and hopefully lure him back to sleep. Sometimes this works, and other times he is too wakeful, so I’ll give up on extending my own sleep for now, and lean over his face and we’ll look at each other and smile and make noises in a call and response. Or I’ll prop his back up against my raised legs,or lay him against my chest for some “tummy time” on mommy, letting him take in his surroundings from new angles and perspective. I love, oh how I love, his early morning eruptions of smiles, gurgles, and coos, sounds that even now are evolving into language.

Where does this happiness come from? Not come from any rational chain of thoughts, but rather, a spontaneous place of being. A bubbling wellspring of unfiltered existence, a place inside all of us, except that as adults, it is harder for us to experience this place because we live too much in our minds. We unconsciously rush to name, analyze, and judge everything that filters through our awareness. Yet with a baby this young, there is no thought process, no sense of even being separate from mother or caregiver, from world. Life is a continual kaleidoscope of colors, shapes, and noises. Moments of discomfort or pain do not come with a story or a self who is experiencing the story.

Babies are so raw and pure it hurts my heart.

It’s hard for me to put in words the awe and love I feel for my baby, and by extension, for all babies (but of course especially for mine). Naturally, I feel a huge responsibility since I am the one who provides this child with his nutrients and care most days, all day long. And I reap such a huge reward as I see my child’s awareness of the world evolving, not to mention his recognition of and delight in me. There is a deep satisfaction that comes from being so needed, and from having one’s job so clearly defined. Even if I am exhausted and long for a break and more time for myself, at core there is no question that I will do what I have to do to take care of this child the best I can, which makes it easier to surrender to this new role.

Much of it boils down to instinct. Genetics. Blood. Myth. The human drive to procreate, and the motherly drive to nurture, protect, and love. One of the only jobs in the world in which you are asked to give and give and give so much, and where the reward is not material nor visible to others, but instead felt in the rushes you feel every day as you are given the chance to love, so wholly, another. It is true that there could be many sorrows ahead. There is risk involved; there is no guarantee that you will have the kind of relationship with your child or your new family that you envisioned. But you invest all your energy in this being and you trust in the unknown, because you have no other choice. Raising a child can be as spiritual a path as any religion or philosophy. For what other kind of path but a spiritual one envelops everything and plunges you forward with such devotion, because it’s the only direction to go?

I feel so blessed that I have the opportunity in this life to watch another being, my son, take in everything from his very first breath onward, and to witness how all of these lights, colors, sounds and movements are slowly now transforming into specific people and environments, imprints and impressions. And I love being the one who is here to help him interact with the world for the first time, as he slowly begins to learn to support his own weight, and eventually, to call each thing by name.

A Woman, Writing, Alone

This is the third time I’ve gotten away to write in a café in the ten weeks since Cedar was born. I plan to do this every weekend now—to take advantage of my three hours or so agreed upon by my husband when I can escape the house and the needs of my baby. To steal away quietly after Cedar’s been nursed and before he has a chance to decide again that he’s hungry or tired and wanting the comfort of his mother’s voice, body, and last but not least, breast. And I realize now how much I need this time; it’s more important to me than I can probably yet understand.

During the first month, recovering from surgery and learning to be a mother was all so new and overwhelming that I barely had time to shower, much less think about writing—though I did manage to scribble a few short entries in my journal, which were usually interrupted mid-sentence. And during the second month, I was just learning how to take care of Cedar alone after Matthew went back to work, so a lack of “me” time seemed a given. But now, I’ve become comfortable and confident enough in my role as a mother, and Cedar and I have settled into enough of a routine for me to begin to miss and crave my old rituals, and to notice how their departure has begun to take its toll.

I miss writing. I need these few hours to decompress, sit, journal and be out in the world appearing in the disguise of my former identity: a woman, alone, writing. Only now, beneath this cover, my breasts are full and heavy with milk, my shoulders and neck sore from nursing, and my body tight from too many days gone by without yoga or exercise. And now, a part of me too always has one ear cocked towards my baby; at the same time that I begin to unwind into this silence of solitude, I also can’t wait to go home and to hear how it went for those few hours we were apart.

These days, my time to do anything besides care for my baby is relegated to short windows and bursts. Cedar’s content for a few minutes in his chair? Quick: make breakfast, get dressed, or make a phone call. Cedar’s finally soundly asleep somewhere besides my arms? Quick: throw in a load of laundry, take a shower, or pay a few bills. Take your pick of a million small tasks that normally could get done in quick succession in a few hours. But now, crossing these things off my list can take weeks. However insignificant in themselves they may seem, I cross them off one by one with satisfaction.

Multi-tasking with an infant is not easy, and I feel better about my day if I’ve managed to do something else besides care for my baby. Most satisfying of course is when I actually manage to write something, spewing out bits and pieces of my new life as a mother. Fragments, that I may or may not find the interest or motivation to return to when I finally arrive at my next opportunity when I can become again: a woman, writing, alone.

I don’t want to complain too much lest it seem like I’m unhappy, because for the most part we are doing really good; in fact, things have been easier than I anticipated. Cedar is a sweet and mellow baby, and I have been proud of my ability to parent alone when Matthew is on the road four days each week for work, proud of the way that I manage to care for my baby and myself, trying to get out of the house and do something each day, be it taking a walk to the pond or going to parenting groups and reaching out to other moms. For the most part, I do what I need to do to stay healthy, happy, and sane.

But, of course, I still have my down days. Days when Cedar resists napping, and I am exhausted, and end up watching too much trash t.v. or never getting out of the house. Or days when I already feel bored by this new life, wondering if some variation of this feeding, napping, stimulating, and soothing routine is what I primarily will do now for years on end, and depressed by how distant I feel from my former identity and working routine as a writer.

Gone is the daily journaling, much less the hours on end to work on long-term projects; gone is the huge rush of motivation I had during the three weeks I spent at Hedgebrook before giving birth to Cedar, where I was able to produce pages upon pages of my new book each day; gone is my most recent surge of hope and determination to publish my memoir, a project that’s been with me too long, especially now that the latest round of rejections have trickled in and I have neither the time nor drive to research a new round of small presses or agents. And while I’m on this rant, gone too now is my motivation to spearhead new creative nonfiction workshops in more venues across Seattle, to update my website and “market myself”, or to reach out to new people to work with one-on-one.

Yes,I am aware that I am still in an early stage of this grand adventure called parenthood, a stage that, like all others, will evolve and pass, and I trust that I will return to the projects that are most important to me. But still I must confess that I’ve been feeling slightly depressed, or rather, ambivalent, right now about the future of my life as a writer. For, right now, and probably forever, nothing could feel more important to me than raising my child. And in a certain light, it really is that simple. Goals that have been important to me for so long, like publishing my book, have faded in their intensity.

Yet then I ask: how much of this new ambivalence is an authentic reaction to the immensity of how my life has changed, and how much is a defensive reaction born of my current state of weariness—and fear. Fear that says, if I’ll never get to return to my writing life in the way that I used to then I might as well lower my expectations, rather than pine for all the time and energy I no longer have. And fear that says, if it was so challenging to keep writing and trying to publish before life with baby, how am I ever going to keep up with it now? These days I feel lucky if I manage to work on one small writing-related task each week, like for instance, this blog. How will I ever write another book?

I want to be clear: I love being a mother. I love it with an intensity of emotion I’ve never known before, and I suspect that this love is only going to get stronger. But there is also a part of me that fears that I will slowly become, first and foremost, a stay-at-home mother -- who writes a bit on the side. Mother, being the dominant identity. And writing, more like a hobby. I’ll look back on my former drive to publish books as youthful optimism, and I’ll settle for lighter goals, like, well, this blog.

For years now, it has taken so much conviction for me to keep writing and calling myself a writer, especially in the earlier days when I was more afraid of other's judgment and had none of the small successes under my belt to “prove” that I was serious. Even when I had lots of time, it still was never easy to commit to this path, this path that does not lead to promises of financial stability much less public acclaim. So now, with only a fraction of the time I had before, yet still with so many goals unfulfilled-- without a book contract, with so few publications, and with so many insecurities each time I step up to teach a new class—perhaps it is only natural for all my dormant, writing-related fears to return.

I think what I am most afraid of is forgetting why writing matters so much to me. Forgetting that writing is much more to me than a career or a chain of rewards (i.e. grants, publications, praise), but that this is my practice, my spiritual practice, a path that I have now cultivated for years. This is not to say that those grants, publications and praises aren’t important, because they are. And it took me a long time to figure all this out—to arrive at the place where I could bridge the private, spiritual practice side of my writing, with the public, publishing and wanting to share my work side. For a long time now, I have no longer been satisfied just writing for myself, yet any accomplishments and praise I gain from others are hollow without the innate knowledge that my writing is feeding the deepest part of me—without that internal, wordless understanding of why, for almost fifteen years now, I’ve sat down to write each day.

Until now. Now, I face a challenge that so many women have faced before me: the question of how to balance motherhood—this huge, enormous role-- with everything else I once held sacred. I know I am not unique, nor am I particularly strong and resilient. I am just one woman, in a chain of many, who has been handed what feels like the most important job in the world—to nurture and care for a child, to feed and help gently shape a new compassionate seed of life—and then left to figure out how to merge her old sense of purpose with her new one.

Throughout my pregnancy, I knew I was preparing for something huge, but there was no way to really understand what this was exactly until I arrived here-- brimming over with protective instincts and a love that is all-consuming. Living a completely new life, yet still connected by a infinitude of threads to my old one. Exhausted at the end of each day, and beneath this weariness, hungry, for just a few moments to remember in my body what it feels like to be a woman, writing, alone.

Versions of My Birth Story

I’ve been trying to find the time to finish writing my birth story, but I sense that I will not be finished with it for a long time. So far, I’ve made a couple different attempts. The first one came in the form of a mass email I sent out about a week after Cedar’s birth, in which I spelled out the gist of what happened: my first contractions came around seven a.m. on March 24th; I was in active labor by around five p.m.; my water broke at nine; my contractions quickly escalated in frequency and intensity. Then, sometime around 1 a.m., I started to get an urge to push. But I was only dilated to six centimeters; it was too early to push. The baby’s head was positioned low and thus triggering the urge. It continued to grow, and I could not help but push at times. Eventually, my cervix got swollen. And after more than four hours of intense rapid breathing in order to repress the pushing reflex, I finally transferred to the hospital at seven a.m. for an epidural to hopefully allow me to rest and my cervix to unswell.

My cervix had since gone from six cm. now down to four and was still tightly swollen. At the hospital, I lay there for hours, poked and prodded at by the nurses, unable to sleep. Meanwhile, contractions had slowed, so in the afternoon, pitocin was started to try and get contractions closer together again, and the dosage was slowly increased over many more hours of waiting. But there was hardly any progress. And by seven p.m., 36 hours after I’d gone into early labor, I was advised to have a c-section. Told of all the potential increased risks of infection and stress to my baby if I waited. Plus, now there was meconium. And after 27 hours of active labor, I was exhausted, questioning how important a vaginal birth really was to me, and ready to meet my baby without worrying about putting him at greater risks. They had me prepped within minutes. Surgery took half an hour. Our baby came out crying and vigorous.

Cedar took to the breast right away, and the nurses who cared for me were wonderful, but after more than three days at the hospital, we were more than ready to come home. There were way too many people in and out of our room all day and night, and it was time for me to heal in my own space. I needed to sink into a nest with just my husband and my baby in order to begin to process what the hell just happened. This bare bones account I’ve just given you cannot do not do justice to the intensity, pain, gratitude, disappointment, resignation, relief, joy and awe that flooded through me during those days of labor and recovery. But there you have it, a two paragraph version of Cedar’s birth, in a nutshell.



About two weeks after I delivered, I was finally able to sit down and free-write a longer version of the story—eleven single-spaced pages of every last detail I could remember. The ‘spew out as much as you can while it’s fresh in two sittings while the baby is sleeping, and don’t worry about flow or grammar’ version. Inevitably, questions started to arise. Questions about what happened from hour to hour-- when I was checked, how far I was along, when I started to get the urge to push, why I was initially told it was okay to push by my midwife’s assistant, how low was my baby’s head in my cervix, how long did I breathe those rapid fire breaths, how much longer could I have afforded to put off the c-section, and what else might have been done to avoid it. I wanted to talk to, and get copies of my chart from, both my midwife who attended the home part of the birth, and the midwife who attended most of my labor at the hospital, in order to be able to see from a linear perspective how it all went down. During the labor, I was not aware of time and I could barely talk to others. But now, in trying to write about it, I needed to understand as much as possible and be able to relay the details with precision-- with a precision that could help me feel like I fully owned the experience. Like there were no questions remaining I had not asked, even if I already knew that many questions could never be answered.

During the first couple weeks following Cedar’s birth, any mention of the experience could bring tears to my eyes. And although that period already feels like a long time ago, the whole journey is still so intimate to me and not an easy one to convey. With the help of my midwife’s chart, and also through talking to my husband and to my friend, Amy, who attended the birth, I’ve started to write a more polished, concise and thorough version of what happened. I am writing this for myself, first and foremost, because I want to have a record before the details grow fuzzy and my motivation to record them less profound. I already largely feel at peace with what happened, but I know that just as my incision from my c-section may be healed on the outside, I am still healing in layers on the inside. And for me, writing out all these versions of my story, and beginning to share them with others, is an integral part of my healing process.

I showed the detailed, play-by-play, in-progress version of my birth story to my friend, Amy. What do you think? I wrote her in an email. I want to post my birth story on my blog, but I’m not sure I’m ready to yet, it’s still so intimate to me. She wrote back,

I feel like you got the story line, the this then this then this. It's all a bit fuzzy for me. Something’s missing though. Emotion? It was such a powerful experience Anne. You were a rockstar! There you were on the bed, Matthew at your side and me at your feet and the cat at my head for hours. And you were breathing through these powerful contractions (I like your train out your ass metaphor!) It was pure magic. The space was infused with magic because you and the baby and the universe were manifesting this baby to be born. It was the most amazing thing. I want to feel more of the power and enormity of the experience in your writing. The goddess incarnate breathing on the bed and in the tub while Matthew and I witnessed and supported and encouraged as the midwives slept… and how he said, as we all lay in bed: it's raining, cedars love the rain. and Miles meowed with you as you labored. And I felt the ancient traditions coursing through me as I poured teakettle and pot after teakettle and pot of boiling water in the tub (I know, that wasn't your experience and you do write about it but it was very ancient and maternal and remembered)…

I knew she was right. My version, so far, was lacking emotion. It was written, for the most part, out of my motivation to understand exactly what happened on the linear, physical plane-- how much, how long, when and where. It was about recording all the details, getting them out of the way, so that I could eventually arrive at the deeper questions and emotions—the mixture of disappointment and relief that I felt when I decided to have the c-section; what it really meant to me to want a home birth, an un-medicated birth, and a vaginal birth and what those meant to me now that I hadn’t been able to have them; and, of course, what it felt like to meet my son. I still need to explore these questions, to honor both the part of me that is disappointed and sad that it didn’t go “as planned,” and the part of me that had prepared myself for this possibility-- that nothing ever goes quite “as planned” and that it would be okay if I ended up at the hospital, and okay if I ended up with a c-section, even though I hoped I wouldn’t. People always say, “What’s important is that you have a healthy baby and healthy mama.” And although I ultimately agree and that’s how I felt in the moment of making the decision to go ahead with the c-section, that doesn’t mean that there still isn’t sadness and questions I need to process, and that these aren’t important.

So what about my friend Amy’s version? The one that honors the magic and power of the experience? Yes, perhaps I will in some other essay be able to tap into that too. But, of course, it can’t be the same version as the one Amy experienced. Because although I was aware of the things that she wrote of—our cat Miles on the bed with us, what Matthew said about cedars and the rain, the procession of kettles of hot water poured into the tub—and so very grateful that she was a witness and could remind me of them, those details were very much in the periphery of my experience. Everything besides concentrating on my breath in order to manage the pain and my urge to push was in the periphery.

My labor was such an ‘out of mind’ experience that I’m having trouble expressing all of its parts in one whole—the timed, chronological, charted part and the physical, painful, visceral part; the spiritual, magical, ancient part and the reflective, looking back on it, redemptive part. All I know is, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. And mostly I’m talking about the physical energy and effort it took. But even the pain I experienced was quickly forgotten once I moved into the next stage of the labor at the hospital, and the huge relief of the epidural. Then the long procession of I.V.s, catheters, monitors, heart beat scares, interventions and procedures. And finally, after so many hours, my son’s birth. Hearing, seeing, touching him, and bringing him to my breast for the first time. Sleeping with him close to my body those first few nights. The dreamlike fog of pain medication, sleep deprivation, and awe at this creature by my side. One life-changing experience on top of another without time or space to process each layer and shade of emotion on its own. No ‘time out’ after birth to pause and recoup before being launched into this huge responsibility and fierce instinctual drive called motherhood.

Maybe months, or years from now, I will be able to write one version of my birth story that supersedes all the others in grace, understanding, and scope, and thus puts all further attempts to tell the story anew to rest. But, for now, I won’t worry about trying to arrive there just yet. For now, I will just piece together whatever fragments I can while my sweet baby sleeps on my chest.

Infinite Patience and Love

A window to write. Don’t know how long it will be, so must begin right away and not dwell. Perhaps not even edit. I must learn new ways or working, of producing, of pounding out words on this keyboard and sharing them with the world without the long stretches of time I once had to ponder and shape. I must learn how to grab those small pockets, like now, as Cedar sleeps in a wrap on my chest. Sometimes he will sleep for hours like this; other times he will wake as soon as I stop moving my body. It seems he’s out right now though, which is great. I love my child like crazy, but I am always happy when he goes to sleep.

Where to begin? Perhaps I will begin every blog entry now with that question. It seems like so much happens every week, every day, that I haven’t had a chance to write about. But days disappear quickly, and usually I am happy if I manage to get in a walk, a shower, three meals, and some emails. Some days I also manage to do dishes or laundry, read a book, or write in my journal. This is more than I imagined I would get done, especially once Matthew went back to work, so I am pleased.

For now it’s all about appeasing Cedar in short doses and getting things done in between. For example, in the morning I get up and change him. Then, while he lies on the changing table entertained for a few minutes by its black and white pattern, I can put in my contacts, put on hot water to boil, and maybe even get dressed. Then, as he gets fidgety, I’ll move him to his chair by the window where he can sometimes be content for ten or fifteen minutes—enough time to make coffee, fry two eggs and butter some toast. Then, I transport these to the table next to him, pick him up, and nurse him on and off for the next two hours or so, managing to eat and read or surf Facebook at the same time. Then this baby nursing and mommy multi-tasking routine could, and sometimes does, go on all day, but often now I’ll put him in this cloth wrap and after walking around in the yard or jiggling a bit to some tunes, he usually falls asleep and then I can do other chores, make phone calls, pay bills, write emails, go on a longer walk, or-- on a rare day like today—actually attempt to write.

On good days, he will nap for three or more hours, before I finally take him out of the wrap, and then he’ll wake up pretty quickly. I’ll change his diaper, then feed him. And then the cycle of nursing/appeasing will begin again while I eventually try to prepare dinner or shower or fold laundry or nap or what have you in between. This is about as close to a schedule as we have come. Of course, other days we might have visitors or go to a drop-in parenting group, or go to a friend’s house who also has a baby, where we will sit, nurse, talk, eat, and change diapers together for hours—basically the same thing we do at home, without the pretense of trying to get anything else done, and with the benefit of being able to talk to others who are going through such similar experiences.

All in all, it’s not a bad life. And some days-- and many moments-- are pure joy. Especially the more that my little one starts to smile and look around and interact with me and the world. Especially now that my nipples aren’t so sore, and that Cedar’s started to sleep for longer stretches, and that this whole adventure is a bit more familiar and a little less overwhelming. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t little milestones to overcome all the time—all kinds of firsts, challenges, changes, anxieties, and plain old tiredness. So, as my energy and ambition grows, I try to remind myself that it’s okay if we end up getting nothing done today or if things don’t go as planned. My job right now, first and foremost, is to feed and to love this guy, plus take care of my basic needs. Sure, I would love to write more and slowly add back in other parts of my former life like yoga, exercise, submitting work for publication, and applying for teaching jobs, but I’ll take it as it comes. Right now, and maybe forever, my baby is here to teach me infinite patience and love. And any time I get frustrated when he might wake earlier than I’d hoped or feed insatiably for hours, I just need to remember this: patience and love.

Motherhood is the most amazing thing I’ve ever known. That’s why I keep feeling the need to write: where, oh where, to begin? But I should end this here or else it will become too unwieldy. I should print it out and see if it can’t be posted soon, with only a quick edit, before Cedar wakes and I put it aside and don’t get back to it for days, and then maybe by then I’ll decide it’s too sloppy or rambling and unfocused. But you know what? That may just be the way this blog needs to be now. Rambling and unfocused. Messy and “good enough.” A way to stay connected to my writing voice and identity, to the myriad of thoughts and emotions coursing through me each day I spend with my baby, and to my audience of friends, family, and strangers—whomever you are. You are important to me.

I love being a mother more than I can possibly express, and in a way that is very real to me, sometimes I think that nothing else in the world really matters now besides this baby and my love for him. But of course there is also my huge love for my friends and family. And then there is my writing, and all the ways in which I know and greet myself as a writer, which I also can not leave too far behind or else my breadth of awareness, community, and giving will grow too narrow.

So I offer you now these scraps, this stolen moment, this tiny window. I’m gonna try my best to sit down like this and ramble away as much as I can. Thanks for listening.

Hijacked

Where to begin? Where to begin to describe the emotions-- the awe, the relief, the rawness, the exhaustion, the overwhelming newness and love coursing through my body during the last three weeks since our son’s birth? How to describe the love I feel, the fierce protective, we belong to each other forever kind of love, the I can’t believe you are here love, the who are you love, the where did you come from and what will we have to teach each other kind of love, the I can’t believe I have a baby, and you are this baby, this perfect, miraculous, incredible, adorable baby and I am so grateful that you are here, we are healthy, and the three of us now form a family kind of love.

How can a love like this arrive so swiftly, so completely, so immensely with no reserve? “Emotionally hijacked,” the nurse from New Zealand said, that’s what happens to us when our children are born, and this phrase stuck out to me through the sleep-deprived, drug-laced fog of the three days I spent at the hospital. Yes, my heart has been hijacked, sucked out from within my former self, fueled by my tears, my hormones, and the sweet soft whimpers you make in your sleep.

Cedar. I love the noises you make—the grunts and the sighs, the ravenous gasping and rooting, the soft dolphin clicking, and the steady persistent wail when nothing but the milk of mama’s breast will do. I love the relationship we already have formed, the way my voice and the sight and smell of my breast placed in front of your face will calm you, how together we complete a bond that no one else can fill. I may complain of sore nipples, poor sleep, and constant feeding, but beneath it all, I am happy—no, overjoyed—to be this nourishment for you. For you, my sweet baby, for you.

Who will you grow to be? What are you here to do in this life? How will we learn and grow together? You have arrived, and our life has changed, and we knew this would happen, yet nothing we read or did could prepare us for what it feels like, to hold you in our arms, to stare at you as you sleep, to marvel at this immense mystery called life and the way it arrives in our world.

Cedar. You came from my body. I grew an organ to feed you. I felt and watched your rolling movements in my belly for months, and now I watch you as you make these same movements here in mama’s outside world, and my brain stretches to comprehend this transition. You were in there, apart from us yet with us, moving and hiccupping and kicking and dreaming, a little aquatic creature who is now learning to live on land and in air, exposed to this world and all of its elements with only mama and papa to protect you, to wrap you up warm and wipe your bum dry and keep you as safe as we can.

Cedar. We have been waiting for you, and now you are here, healthy and whole, and I bow down and give thanks for this blessing. I know you are the perfect child for me, whoever you are and have yet to become. You who have already claimed me, seized the pulse of my heart.

Trust

I am eleven days away from my due date. Babies come early, babies come late; for first-time mothers, babies are often late-- and yet-- it is also true that I could go into labor any day now, any place. I feel my body growing heavier, I’ve been more achy and tired with increasing menstrual cramp-like sensations. There’s less room for my baby to move in there, so when he does move, whole sides of my belly stretch and protrude. He moves, and I immediately feel pressure on my bladder. He moves, and I cannot help but notice-- and wonder, and imagine-- at what point will this movement translate into my first contraction? My water breaking? Sudden cramping or pain? At what point will the realization sink through: this is it. Sweep the floors, make the bed: our baby is to come.

Corresponding to his impending arrival, I’ve been thrust into the “nesting” phase of obsessive-compulsive task- completing and list-making. I’ve gathered all the home birth supplies, including a huge stack of old towels, and tied them in plastic bags now stored under our changing table. Baby diaper service has delivered our first week’s worth of 70 cloth diapers. My husband and I have gone to Costco and stocked up on toilet paper, laundry soap, soy milk, tomato sauce, black beans, pasta, fluids for labor, and much more, to avoid as much shopping as possible in the months to come. We’ve cleaned out the attic and basement, and dropped stuff off at Value Village and the dump to make room for all the baby gear slowly populating odd corners of our house. We decided last weekend to sell our two old station wagons in order to buy a newer car for me to drive the baby in. We’ve chosen our baby’s doctor, written a birth plan, ordered a birthing tub, held two baby showers, written thank you cards, attended classes on labor, newborn care, post-partum planning, and breastfeeding, reorganized our dresser drawers… and the list goes on.

Thankfully, most of the important stuff has been taken care of, and now I’ve moved on to tackling other projects on my list. I am currently scanning and transferring hundreds of old slides of my old friends, Els and Frank, onto my computer; I also have a stack of Els and Frank’s letters I still hope to transcribe; I am making a digital scrapbook of the last two years of me and Matthew’s lives; I am about to start collaging a belly cast my friend Amy helped me to make—and I’d still like to make some other birth art with the watercolors and pencils I bought for this purpose.

I’m trying to strike a balance between staying busy, and slowing down. People say it can be good to stay busy around this time or else you might go crazy with anticipation, especially once you reach your due date. I enjoy these projects, and it would feel great to finish some of them or else who knows when I will return to them. But conversely, and more importantly perhaps, I want to slow down and spend time moving through my days aware of these last quiet moments alone, breathing, anticipating the changes to come.


***


My home is my temple, and may never feel like this more so than when we welcome into it our baby, this new life. I want everything to be clean, to feel open, uncluttered, and relaxing. To be perfect. And yet this is where the paradox comes in: I know that true perfection can only be realized when I let go of caring about all the imperfections. I know that when I go into labor not every last inch of the house will be scoured, all my signs of every day living may still be strewn about, my husband may very well be on the road for his work and hours away from me yet, or that something will be “out of place” or not quite as I imagined, and I’ll just have to breathe and say “holy shit it’s happening,” and go with it. Know that I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Trust that my body will know what to do. Trust in the awareness training I’ve cultivated for years. Breathe and greet each contraction anew. Be curious about the pain as it evolves and grows stronger. Groan, grunt and dissolve into the wild creature I’ve learned I can be. Let go of my fears and inhibitions. Accept that I am not in control.

I believe that I can do this, that I can give birth without drugs at home, and that I can labor for hours or days if that is what it takes. Yet I also know that I am not a failure if I need to transfer to the hospital. If the pain or fatigue becomes too much for my body to take, or if there are any complications. I trust that they will take care of me there too, and that nothing about this labor is a fight or a show. That it is an experience handed to me from God, a dance, an interplay of what is given and how each moment is received. And while I am not in control of what happens, I know that the connection between my mind and body can play a huge role in how it unfolds.

I’ve carried so much anticipation in these past months, learning and thinking about this day when my baby will be born, what my labor will be like, and who my son will be. Now, it is so strange and overwhelming to know that this day is soon to arrive.

I’ve been in training for what feels like the most important day of my life. I’ve checked things off lists, read scores of books, attended classes, talked to friends, written blog posts, and yet, ultimately, I sense that it is the slow, steady, internal transformation that has been preparing me most of all. It is the sudden brimming of tears, the “holy shit” moments of reckoning, and the deep deep surrender to a trust that I must now embrace.

Turn, Baby, Turn

Almost every day, I lie in bed and feel my belly, trying to recognize body parts, trying to guess how my baby now lies.

For, during the last couple visits to my midwife, my baby has been in the breech position (head at the top). She showed me how you could tell it was the head—it is hard, and when you push at it with two fingers held a few inches apart, it bobbles back and forth but does not move the rest of the body. Whereas, when you push at other body parts, this often moves the whole body, or else the baby pushes back, so you know you must be prodding a leg or an arm or something.

It seemed easy enough to locate, but now, left for weeks on my own, I can never be sure what I am feeling. There are so many body parts, so many hard surfaces—is this the back, the bottom, or what? I feel movements in so many places, and I try to imagine what kind of contorted position my baby might be in that elicits these jabs and rolls from all sides. I palpate my fingers along the sides, bottom, and top of my uterus to try and distinguish a rough shape, and sometimes I think I’m on to something. But ultimately, I have to give up and let go. It’s too hard for me to tell for sure, and it’s too early to really start worrying.

They say that there is still plenty of time for him to turn, and I know this is true. Something like 50% of babies lie in the breech presentation at some point during pregnancy, but only 5% stay in that position for delivery—which these days usually means a c-section. OBs aren’t even trained in vaginal breech deliveries anymore. Some midwives still do breech deliveries, but fewer and fewer have the experience—and in turn, fewer will pass on this knowledge to their students. It is a dieing skill. Breech vaginal deliveries used to be common, until sometime in the 1970s when a study was released that found c-sections to be the safer alternative, although some might contest this. Today, a very small percentage of breech babies are delivered vaginally.

To my surprise, I learned that my midwife actually does breech vaginal deliveries. She speaks of her experience with a calm confidence, and says that they do not scare her. This news filled me with both gratitude and trepidation. I’d simply assumed that if my baby was breech I’d have a c-section like all the other women I’d talked to. (And I seem to know quite a few women who have had breech babies, considering that they supposedly only occur in 5% of births.)

But I haven’t wanted to go here yet. I haven’t wanted to start weighing the pros and cons, tapping into my intuition, and discussing in detail with my husband and midwife what we would do. For everyone tells me we still have plenty of time… I’m at 32 weeks, and it’s usually around 35 weeks or so that babies assume the position that they will stay in. Yet even then, plenty of babies turn at a late date. My friend’s baby, in fact, flipped into the breech position in her last week of pregnancy. Babies know best, some say, how they want to be born.

So, with the exception of a few quickly scanned articles, I have resisted the onslaught of Internet research and statistics for now that would no doubt make me feel stressed out and worried. And I have resisted talking to too many people about this, for fear that talking and thinking about it too much will make me more anxious. Instead, I have tried to concentrate my energy on encouraging my baby to turn.

There are many things one can do, with varying reports of success. For example, talking to the baby or playing music down low is supposed to help, as babies will gravitate towards the sounds. Or doing flips or handstands in a pool. Or lying with your pelvis elevated and feet up against the wall at an angle. Or taking pulsatilla, a homeopathic flower. Or acupuncture and moxibustion. Or visualizations. Or putting an ice pack up high, and something warm down low. Or shining a flashlight down low. Or later, a more invasive procedure where the doctor manually tries to push your baby into a new position.

I’ve tried a few things from the list above, and later on, if my baby still hasn’t turned, I will no doubt try more. But for now I am trying not to obsess over the process; and trying every single strategy on the list would, for me, constitute obsessing. You don’t want to worry about it, my midwife said, for stress itself can keep your baby from turning.

Easier said than done of course. Not worrying about something for me usually means not thinking about it at all. But it’s hard not to carry some worry, however far back it lies in your consciousness, when you are suddenly given this new list of things that you should be doing, in addition to all the things you are already supposed to be doing—like getting 70-80 grams of protein a day, plus all the necessary nutrients, omega-3s, vitamins, and vegetables; like drinking enough water, exercising five times a week, doing Kegels, and prenatal yoga; like buying infant car seats and figuring out where he will sleep, choosing a pediatrician, reading up on childbirth, taking classes, identifying support systems, and a million other little things that one could possibly do to prepare for childbirth and parenthood.

So, my husband and I have made a tape of our voices talking that I can play each night at the bottom of my belly when my husband is away; I’ve been taking pulsatilla; and I bought a maternity bathing suit and have started going to the pool (something I haven’t done since I was a child). Floating, stretching, and moving through the water has felt wonderful, and I am grateful for the way this ‘turn’ in my pregnancy has gotten me to do something so therapeutic that I wouldn’t have done otherwise. I am also thankful for the way this process has forced me and my husband to talk more to our baby, and to think about all the ways in which he is listening.

***

Faith, acceptance, and hope are tricky mind-heart states to balance. I’m trying to trust that my baby will turn (and I know the statistics are in my favor), at the same time that I’m trying to hold the awareness that whatever happens will be okay. That in the end, he either will or he won’t turn, and there won’t be anything I can do about it. All I can do is make the most informed and most intuitive decisions possible, each step of the way.

Next week, I have a prenatal appointment, one I’ve anxiously been awaiting. My midwife will be able to tell me again what position my baby now lies in. He is definitely an active one, moving all the time, but I don’t think he’s turned head down yet, because I have yet to feel his kicks up real high. But then again, I’m really not sure—for, by now, his legs might be wrapped up around his body, and surely there must be plenty of positions he could be in that I can’t visualize.

For now, I try to remember to breathe and send my baby love. To feel calm, rested, and at peace as I lay in bed with my hands on my belly. To let go of the fears and what-ifs, at the same time that I pray for a gentle birth-- for both me, and my child.

I pray that whatever decisions I may still have to make about this pregnancy and delivery will come clearly and easily.

I pray that I can carry an open acceptance about whatever needs to happen.

And I pray that my baby hears my voice whispering, now, turn, baby, turn.

The Philosopher and the Sailor

(Note: this post will make more sense if you've read prior posts- Love Letters, and The Gift.)

I’ve finally finished reading the letters. How many? Well, Els and Frank were apart roughly six months out of the year, for four decades. Els wrote maybe three times a week, Frank probably once a week on average. So, that equals 3,840 letters, give or take a few.

Back when I first discovered them and spent a week or so reading as many as I could from random years (before I had yet to order them by date), I wondered, “When will I ever have time to read these?” Now, being pregnant, unemployed, and especially motivated to work on this project thanks to a small grant, not to mention an impending due date, I have been provided with the perfect window to settle in.

People ask me if I’ve been writing lately, and I tell them, with a slight sense of guilt, that mostly I’ve been reading letters. It’s easy to do. I take out a stack of them after I’ve done my morning journaling, and this often leads to the “just one more” mentality. I make it through a year, let’s say 1975, and then I notice how the next year—1976—is so much thinner than the previous, so maybe I’ll read one more year. Then, by the time I make it to 1977, I’ve practically made it through the whole decade, so maybe I should just finish the 70s off. But when I get to the 80s, I figure, this is the final decade to go, why not just finish them all? And in this way, I have plowed through, and saved much of the writing for this project for “later.”

Although I feel like I should be writing more than I have, reading all of the letters does actually feel necessary, as opposed to other procrastination methods like, say, Facebook. And there is something to be said for reading all the letters in one continuous swoop and absorbing the big picture of their correspondence, marriage, and life.

The big picture reveals some amazing, yet sad, tedious, and often painful reoccurring themes.

Let’s start with the ways in which we repeat ourselves. The ways in which we stay in situations for years or decades that we have so many misgivings about. The ways in which our minds feed on loops, and we constantly talk about the same things. The ways in which our lives and our dreams disappoint us. The ways in which, the older we get, the more our ideas of what is possible for ourselves and our paths seem to shrink.

Els started complaining about her marriage sometime in the mid-sixties when she was in her early forties -- about how lonely she was with him away at sea for so much of the year, and about Frank’s poor communication and his lack of support of her ideas and her writing. Her discontent continued to grow stronger, as did her accusations of his selfishness, verbal abuse, and controlling ways. I’d always known that they’d had problems in their marriage, but to read the steady progression of complaints, depression, and despair, letter after letter, has been sad and surprising to me. Could Frank, this man that I’d grown to respect and revere as an adult as one of the most generous and mellow of souls, really have been so selfish and demanding of his wife? How much of Els’s point of view am I to believe, especially when Frank’s letters offer little to deny nor support her claims? It is hard to not to sympathize more with Els. Since she wrote the most often and with the most detail, it has been easiest to see their story and marriage primarily through her lens.

One abbreviated version goes like this: Here was a man who chose to be away half the year at sea (working as a merchant marine), wandering through exotic ports and living a bachelor’s life, then coming back to home base for a few months to be nurtured and fed, before taking off to travel for a few months with his wife, who cooked and baked profusely each day inside the hull of their sailboat or out the back of their station wagon. He loved to read old classics and history, especially Joseph Conrad, and claimed to be content with his lot in the world. Determined to live the way he wanted to live, and not worry about the things he couldn’t save or change.

And here was a woman who stayed at home alone half the year alone, tending to the house on a frugal budget, writing to her husband about things she wanted to repair or stocks she wanted to invest in, given permission to do as she saw best, but always first seeking his approval. Wanting to prove that she was a good saver and wife, that she could be entrusted with his hard-earned money. At the same time, trying to forge a creative path for herself, to find a sense of purpose in her existence outside of the household duties. Becoming involved in various causes, but ultimately seeking something more. Increasingly bitter that she never birthed a child—a decision that seems to have been made by Frank. Becoming obsessed with various philosophies, but disillusioned by imperfections she found in each of them, none quite reflecting her precise worldview. Wanting to write her own book to solve this problem, and also starting to write more poetry. Yet her husband didn’t like her poetry, nor did he like her analytical mind that grasped at theories. So these were pleasures that she clung to and could not share with her spouse, passions in life that she felt she needed to defend.

More and more, it was as if they lived separate lives. “We don’t really communicate,” Els complained, “it takes two.” “I have to admit to myself that I am dissatisfied, that I have been a long time. Our way of life was your choice, not mine…” And, “I realize you like to always be on the move. Since we bought this house it has been home base to you but not home, you really don’t live with me except on the Hoko,” (their boat).

In the early seventies, Els got serious and wrote to Frank about getting a divorce. She was embarking on a new phase of her life, empowered and psychologically freed by her discovery of Transcendental Meditation and the several weeks she spent meditating in Northern California. Then, a year or so later, her talk shifted to getting a legal separation. Then, who knows what happened, almost all talk of separating disappeared. In most letters, you would not even know there is any discontent. They still call each other by names like ‘Lover’ and ‘Darling Wife. In fact, even in the letters where Els complains about their marriage, oftentimes in the very next paragraph she will go on to write in a chatty tone about the plants in the yard, her daily outings, or financial business, and sign off with love and affection. It’s almost as if this dialogue of discontent went on for so long that it grew to be one of many ongoing conversations, perhaps mostly carried out in her head.

Most of the time, it is hard to tell what was actually communicated because Frank would barely respond to her words directly. Els would write long diatribes about his shortcomings in their partnership or about her epiphanies about her life and the universe, which would be answered by Frank’s terse news of when they’d reach this or that port, and an occasionally descriptive travelogue recounting some new port. In all of his letters, all I can find that answers her pleas for a change is a line here or there of token acknowledgment, such as, “Some of the things you’ve said hurt my feelings but there isn’t anything you can’t say to me,” or “All I can say in reply to all you have said is that I love you and hope we can continue to live together the rest of our lives.” What woman wouldn’t go out of her mind if that was the kind of response she got from long letters where she’d poured out her heart?

Indeed, Frank always proclaimed his love and devotion and addressed her with terms of sweet endearment, and I never ran across a cruel word or tone in his letters, which makes me think that he couldn’t have been as verbally abusive as she implied. And yet, who knows what his words (or more likely, his silence) was like in person.

At a certain point, one cannot tell how seriously either of them took her words, especially once she’d backed off of her resolve to take charge with a divorce. And there is no way for me to know what was communicated during the months when Frank was at home. What was said in person. And what bonds of friendship, shared experience and understanding kept them together despite it all. After all, they both loved nature, simple pleasures, living frugally, and authenticity in people and art. They both were kind, curious, and compassionate people, even if these traits were manifested in different ways. Perhaps they were able to reach some resolutions, however temporary, before Els’s next wave of discontent arose. (Although I suspect that their in-person communication was not a whole lot better than their letter writing, for Els also complained of this.)

I know that from the beginning of their marriage, Frank warned Els that he was not much of a letter writer. And one can also forgive him a tad for belonging to a generation (or some might say species) of males who do not readily speak of their feelings. His letters are the most vivid and interesting when he is visiting a new port, describing his forays into the back streets and markets, and his encounters with locals in cities like Bombay, Valpairosa, Singapore, and Belawan.

And for whatever reason, his letters got more descriptive in the 1970s and 1980s, whereas they were much shorter in the 50s and 60s. Maybe he was finally warming up to this “letter-writing business,” or maybe he grew lonelier and more sentimental as he crept into middle age. “I tend to lose my identity when I’m out of touch with you for too long,” he wrote. Perhaps he’d already reached the peak of his wanderlust, and yet could not bear the thought of staying in one place and settling down at a 9-5 job.



As I read these letters, I go back and forth as far as who I sympathize with, or who I identify with more. Mostly, I find myself sympathizing with Els, even though her mind, her depression, and her obsession with philosophy and figuring out the universe, would surely have driven me crazy if I had to live with her. Yet from real life, I know that it is Frank that I identify with more closely as an adult, however closed off his emotional world was, or at least his ability to express it.

Probably I would have connected more to Els in my twenties, when I too was a tad obsessed with trying to name and define my spiritual path and system of beliefs. But once I found a certain level of trust in what I knew what was important to me in life, and could start to separate the difference in what I believed versus what I knew for myself, I eventually let go of the intense sense of struggle that had once surrounded so many of my finer spiritual questions. Perhaps I’ve simply have entered a phase where this focus doesn’t interest me so much, and maybe later down the road I will I return to those questions with a renewed sense of gravity. Maybe this is a common phase for those like me who are in a home-, family-, and career-building stage of their thirties; or maybe it is simply because I feel at peace with my life right now, and am supported by a wonderful partnership, and so I don’t feel as great of a need to cultivate meditation practices (besides writing, walking, and occasional yoga), to join spiritual groups, or to pray and connect with the greater source of life that feeds me—and that ultimately, behind my daily list of to-dos, I still am humbled and amazed by. Perhaps some day I’ll be struck by some great heartache or opening again that will reorient me in this direction, but for now, my spiritual life feels less heavy and esoteric, and more of a mellow and laid back constant, an ongoing intuitive response to what each day brings, from my heart.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. All these generalizations feel somewhat glib and too simple in light of having just read almost 4,000 letters. There is so much more I could say, so much to digest and absorb, so many tangents to reflect on, and so much to take care not to summarize or surmise too quickly, as if these letters could ever tell the whole story.

Pregnancy Tripping: In Between Goodbye and Hello

I’ve heard it said that once you enter the role of a parent you cannot quite imagine not being one, and that so much comes intuitively, that you learn as you go, adapt, and rise to the challenge. I can imagine how, for many people, this is true. You’re fully committed now, in the thick of it, and your baby is a visible, breathing entity, crying and screaming for his needs. There’s no turning back, no one-layer-removed. This is your new reality staring you in the eye. You may not know exactly what to do in any given situation, but you know you must do something. There’s no more daydreaming, wondering, anticipating…

Whereas pregnancy, for me anyway, has been one continuous mind-heart trip of reading, researching, dreaming, preparation and anticipation. First I spent a good amount of time researching home births and choosing the ideal midwife. Then I spent hours online comparing birthing classes, doulas, infant car seats, and slings. And on the streets, I cannot help but study the babies and parents I pass. I try not to stare too intrusively at the same time that I take note of what kind of baby carrier, sling, or stroller they are using, how young their child is, how warmly they are wrapped up against the cold, and what expression the new parents wear on their face, how comfortable they seem in their role. I think about how just a few months ago this mama was still like me, in the throes of anticipation and the unknown, perhaps never having cared for an infant. And now, within months, she is officially a mother; she has collected all the infant gear she will need to get her through this first stage of exhaustion, she has settled into a tentative rhythm of feeding, sleeping, and changing, and she is beginning to feel a bit more grounded in her new reality. Perhaps she already cannot imagine not being a mother, and in particular, the mother of this child. Or perhaps her sleep deprivation prevents her from even attempting to be self-reflective. Maybe she’s just hanging on, trying to meet basic needs and get by.

Recently I've started learning more about labor, comfort measures, stages of birth, and parenting so that I have some sense of what lies before me. Although I don’t want to start obsessing about pain nor parenting too early, there are certain choices that seem wise to consider ahead of time. And I have always been one who enjoys making lists, crossing things off, and planning ahead, rather than waiting till the last minute. I don’t want to wait until the last month of pregnancy (when I will no doubt be more uncomfortable and huge) to run around buying stuff, and I want to make sure that I take the time to compare products to make sure I don’t buy junk, but I don’t want to buy into the whole idea that you need TONS of stuff for your new baby, or that you need to get it all right away, top-notch, or brand new.

Yet I realize to some degree that no matter how much I plan and research, I cannot control the outcome of my labor, birth, and plunge into parenthood-- the baby will come when he wants to come, the labor will last as long as it needs to last, and I will handle the pain as gracefully or fanatically as my grunting, stretching primal self can. There is only so much I can do to feel confident, at peace, and prepared, and from there on out I just need to surrender and let go.

For me, pregnancy is the ultimate limbo state, poised between the known and unknown. There is a baby growing each day (currently about 16 inches, 2.5 pounds), moving and kicking with increasing oomph in my belly, and listening to and recognizing our voices as we speak. There is my changing form and hindered motions, my belly growing rounder and more taut week by week, staring back at me in the mirror, sometimes striking me as normal and other times making me shake my head, “Holy shit!” And there is my relationship with my husband and the slowly deepening comprehension that soon we will be parents. Creating our own little familial unit. And that along with my final groan and push and the cry of the baby’s first breath, will come a whole new life, re-focused and organized around this being. As the weeks to the due date dwindle, we increasingly will find opportunities to say things like, “This will be the last time we spend this many consecutive days together alone. For a LONG time,” and trip out anew .

We are entering this journey for the long haul, yet we have only started to pack our bags. We won’t know what’s really in store for us until we take those first steps into the vast, yet somehow seemingly familiar, unknown.

I always knew that I’d love to have a child, a family, and yet, before we started preparing for this journey, I didn’t long for it or covet it with a sense of intensity. I watched other friends have babies and raise families, and although I knew on some abstract level that I wanted one too, I didn’t envy the way they had to leave gatherings early or would rarely be able to get out for a night on the town. Parties where kids ran around afoot were great, but not quite as interesting as the ones where things had the potential to get really crazy. Hanging out with a mom and her child could also be fun, but not as satisfying as getting to talk to her with no distractions.

I’ve never wanted to become one of those couples who, once they have children, only hang out with other couples with children and only talk about their children. How boring. And I don’t want to be a mom who spends the rest of her life obsessing about buying her kids the best things, getting them into the right schools, feeding them the right foods, reading them the right books, and in short, making sure that they do everything possible to make them the smartest and most loved (yet hopefully not spoiled nor controlled) kid on the block. And yet, I can see how this is a path that one can easily find themselves on. It's only natural to reach out to others who are going through this same incredible learning process as you are, and to welcome play dates and the relief from parenting isolation they provide. And of course you want to give your child the best that you can, and you do this in the best ways that you know how, however flawed. This is, after all, your child that grew from your own flesh and blood.

We are having a baby. We are creating a family. We are saying goodbye to the days of late night indulgences of wine, music, and hazy reverie, and preparing to welcome in the long nights of crying, breasts, milk, and diapers. We are saying goodbye to the days when we could leave town for a week and just leave our cat an overflowing bowl of kibble, and hello to our new life where we’ll feel like we are getting away with something huge if we get out by ourselves for dinner and a movie. Yes, I know it’s not forever. I know I’ll eventually be able to pump and dump on occasion and enjoy an indulgent night of drinking and youthful nostalgia-- quarters! (Just kidding.) And a ways down the road we may even be able to drop the kiddo off with my parents for a weekend and enjoy several days on end. But beyond this… we’re looking at, oh, 18 years or so of hardcore commitment and responsibility. We’re looking at a brand new phase of our life, where the history we’ve shared as a couple and the history each of us has lived as an individual on our own path, struggling to find our work and our way, will take a back seat to the new history we will build with our child, the new story we will create as a family. No, I will not give up my writing (though I humbly accept that it may be relegated for a while to a few scribbled lines here and there), and no, Matthew will not give up fishing (though he may have to be content with that one salmon he catches versus ten), but on some abstract level we are aware that these central activities in our lives must find a way to live quietly in the background for a while, grateful for whatever morsels of time we can feed them.

The amazing thing is that I’m actually looking forward to this. I’m looking forward to setting aside life as I’ve cultivated it for the last 17 or so years I’ve grown as an adult, and plunging into this free-falling abyss, wherever it brings us. This is what I call trippy. This sense of not knowing what this altered state will be like, at the same time that a part of me intuits. And this sense of waiting for this little life-form to arrive that is part-me, part-Matthew, and part stardust, neither of us, all of us… this being that will come to teach us about ourselves and everything we once thought we knew. On one hand I am so very thankful that I still have three months to process all this and get ready, and on the other hand, I am already crying out, “BRING IT ON!”