Spring: such beautiful things and dead baby birds. I have spent hours each day walking the puppy child, our new baby, and listening to podcasts. That he has to go out, HAS to, has been a blessing. I'd been slowly descending into a muted-colored and muffled depression, the kind that for me comes in cycles related to the moon and the mood of the last phrase read, music absorbed through the skin, line in a drawing or slight from a family member who either doesn't care or doesn't recognize their callousness when I discovered the podcast, "The Hilarious World of Depression."* While listening to PLACEBO: A Conversation with Ana Maria Cox (5/5) , walking through an open field full of clover patches, dandelions and "wishes" I nearly tripped over one, then two dead babies. They were featherless, with bulging closed eyes that were black and blue. Their skin was 70s-band-aid flesh and their tiny beaks and claws looked like baby finger nails. They were so plastic and so still and so hopeless. The sight of them caused me to gasp and dart in another direction. I didn't want to stand by too long, to stare too long, to come so close that their lost hope might touch me. It was drizzling, preparing for rain, so I put up my hood and stared across the field. And then I walked back.
The day before I'd seen a bird and a squirrel quarreling above my head in my own yard. I'd never seen an interspecies battle like this so was drawn to all the desperate, violent chatter between the two of them. I understood, even from my vantage point, that something wasn't right. The blackbird was beside herself and the squirrel seemed so caustically aloof and reckless. I found myself getting annoyed with that damned squirrel. But the puppy found something more curious and interesting across the yard and I walked with him to find someone else's shit to roll in (yeah, I pulled him up before that could happen.).
Early the next morning, I'd raced behind Ivan as he bolted down the stairs and out the door to relieve himself after a long night of "holding it in." He was playful and fluffy and so early-morning baby sweet so, even though I was in my nightgown with a sweatshirt over it, pulled on haphazardly as I tried to protect myself from the morning's cold, I let him tour me through the open yards that sprawled behind ours and our neighbors' houses. As we left the wall that holds the creek that runs through town, he discovered what all the fuss had been about just the day before. Two babies had taken a long, miserable fall to the ground. Below the nest now lay lifeless a developing bird and the head of its sibling. Ivan licked the head and I pulled him more aggressively than I'd meant to get him away from it. I couldn't bear to look. And then I couldn't stop.
I studied the lifeless body, saw the articulation in its exposed wing, considered its fall, looked up to see the nests that dotted that tree and wondered from which it had fallen. I thought of the hysteria in the mother's cawing and flapping as the squirrel had teased and taunted. I wondered for how long an animal mourns or if it does at all. These two babies were dead but were there others? Could she love the others more fiercely because they'd survived or was she just meeting the task at hand, the imperative, keeping them alive? I remembered the first time I'd seen little baby birds, they'd been tiny chicks in an incubator, I and thought of their smell and the warmth that surrounded them and the peep-peep-peep of all of them hovering close to one another. I wished for that for this dead bird. Warmth.
Against my better judgment, I took my family to my parents' home in sunny Florida for spring break, the Florida weather promising a break from the bleak, rainy April we'd been having. We'd had to leave Ivan who'd not been with us so long and I considered for a moment staying behind. I have been torn to shreds by how much of a relationship I should allow between my parents and my children. On the one hand, I'd rather just suck it up and not have to explain the intricacies of dysfunctional family dynamics to two little girls who have felt the fullness of my love and protection from the moment we'd promised ourselves to one another, and on the other I am shattered to endure the aggressive, palpable disdain and contempt in which my parents hold me. It's only warm outside in sunny Florida. I'd fallen out of the tree.
While searching through old photo albums, I found my baby book where I learned that I'd not left the hospital until 18 days after I was born. Eighteen days in Vassar Hospital in the cold of a Poughkeepsie winter in January. I knew I'd been born prematurely and that I'd been placed in an incubator for care and protection in my early days but was told very little else. When I first learned as a child that I'd been in an incubator, I thought immediately of myself on a tiny tray, cuddled up trying to get warm and become strong enough to face this thing called life. I also thought about "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" (a movie starring John Travolta as "the boy" that I'd watched as a girl) because I imagined in my frailty and sickness, I could not and should not have been much handled. I sat in isolation with visits from my mother when she was dropped off at the hospital by my father each morning. And how did I miss her touch? How did I feel in that silence? Those first eighteen days have marked me, imprinted me as a fallen bird.
Nature is not sentimental. The fittest survive and the others perish. Animals and plants and we humans have to adapt and evolve or lose our one shot. The grass beneath the birds was so lush and green after weeks of rain, and pollen from all the beautiful flowers in bloom coated the world chartreuse and yellow. The green of the whole scene swallowed up those tiny bodies until I was right upon them. I felt a responsibility to them, a need to bury and protect their brief moment here. To honor their attempt to live their tiny lives. Perhaps they'd stuck their necks out too long to reach for their food or been knocked over by a squirrel or the wind. Maybe they'd arrived too early, when the spring thaw had not quite happened and it was too cold for them to survive and their mother had long abandoned the nest. Maybe their mother felt the environment too unsafe to risk caring for them where she'd built her nest or knew they were too weak to survive and had flown away.
When humans touch baby animals that have been lost or fallen or hurt they doom them to never be lovable or acceptable to their mothers. It had always terrified me, the thought of the baby animal picked up and returned to its nest or burrow or clearing, saved, only to be rejected by its mother and left in the world to defend itself and surely die. It seemed so cold, so callous, so heartless, and so unfair that a chance moment could change the course of a new life.
As the drizzling developed into a steady rain, I turned away from the birds along the path. The green of the spring dotted with the vibrant colors of the flowering trees and well planted tulips and other blooms gave my walk back an other-worldly haze. I stopped abruptly as the hosts of the podcast quietly uttered the pain around the suicide of one's brother and the failed attempts of one of the hosts. There was silence and grief and palpable pain. The silvered light of this grey day sharpened and I caught my breath. The sound of my gasp in my ears as my headphones shielded me from the noises outside of my personal space echoed and stilled me. I felt so suddenly alone. The emptiness of navigating the world alone shook me. I was vulnerable, unguarded, stealing oxygen for my tiny lungs. Motherless. I'd fallen from the nest.
And once you are out of the nest and find yourself alive you have to make a choice. I took a little longer at first to meet the milestones that are the bullets on any mother's checklist. I was small but met the developmental challenges easily. I don't remember much contact. I suppose one wouldn't but the continued lack of it throughout my life hints that there wasn't very much. It is as crushing to write this as it is to know. I have never had much emotional, psychic, or physical connection with my parents, often feeling indifference or active disdain. I have always believed it was because I arrived as imperfectly as I did, premature, small, fragile, and sensitive, because I fell. It has made me profoundly sad and secretive. I have hurt so deeply and so silently, have faded into life's lushness, felt small and frail and alone. I have listened to countless explanations and excuses from others as though what I feel and experience in my heart could not be truth enough. My heart that beats and mourns the tiny, dead baby birds along my dog walking route couldn't possibly know.
Now the rain was coming at a steady clip and even Ivan was ready to go home. It's warm inside. Our house has pillows and blankets, delicious smells, soft light, private spaces and nooks, communal tables and couches. It is plush like the swelling comfort of spring's garden and every place is safe. I finished out the podcast with my headphones over my ears, sitting on the floor of the kitchen with Ivan and his toys. I stroked his soft white fur and kissed him on his pink nose and let him lick me. The licks to my face and mouth that I swore I'd never allow now covered me. My puppy licked my salty tears and fell over on his back for me to rub and pet the fur on his belly. We'd found him in the shelter, in a viewing room with his sister. Though my husband had seen pictures, we'd never known his parents. They weren't with him anymore. We are his new family and I am his mother.
(c)Copyright 2017. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
*"The Hilarious World of Depression" is a podcast hosted by John Moe that offers frank, funny, smart conversations with well-known comedians and humorists about their battles with depression and other mental health issues.
Delicious treats dreamed up by my love, fabulous gifts, and the comfort of family makes Mother's Day special or at least appropriately celebrated in the eyes of our everyday-is-a-party culture. I don't need pomp and circumstance and surely don't stand on ceremony, not for this made up day. Mother's Day is always a strange one for me. My husband, who is a private chef, almost always works so that the lady of the house can celebrate with her family in grand fashion. THAT is her Mother's Day.
Mine, at least for the past few years, looks more like this: my husband leaves for a beautiful destination of the rich and famous by private jet or souped up, tinted-window SUV to prepare luxury meals and treats for his clients, and I finish out the week of school, activities, play dates, grocery shopping, story reading (now listening since the 6 year old is thrilled to show off her reading), and socializing on my own. It's our rhythm and save the early school drop off on Friday when both girls need to be ready early enough to drop by 8 am, I can and do handle it.
I am too keenly aware of how quickly my children are growing up. Little chubby hands and fat, yummy fingers have become strong and elegant, rolly-poly bodies have elongated into graceful torsos, arms and legs for days, and beautiful faces resting on long necks. I measure time by these changes, recall real life events by growing and falling teeth, short or long hair, training wheels or riding free. In a mother's calendar there are also injuries and ailments as mile markers, moments that stop one's heart, and shore up strengths one did not know were there.
I remember when Lily broke her finger one summer when her cousin was visiting and recall her saying with pride after she'd been X-rayed and splinted, "I can't believe I broke a bone!" She was beaming and proud of her ability to hurt, to suffer, and to endure. She was so human in that moment and she brought my fantasy of being able to protect them, live the hurts for them, take the force of the blow, crashing to the ground. And months later when Virginie, walking with some friends along the creek that either trickles or rages through our town depending on the season, tripped and cut her chin requiring three stitches, I regretted the choice I made to allow her the opportunity to explore and court danger.
It's the delusion I have of shielding my children from life's pains and ills and woes, and physical safety seems a good place to practice. How many times a day do I say, "Be careful! Watch out! Don't touch that! Don't slip! Don't fall! Look out! Why would you do that? You are going to hurt yourself!" And hurt sucks. The iconic images of motherhood show women cuddling and comforting their children, holding them close, wiping tears and touching boo-boo's. The urban mythology of mothers lifting cars, running into burning buildings, staring down wild animals or humans to keep their babes safe only emphasizes this expectation.
When I arrived to a screaming Virginie, hurt on an after-school play date, her middle toe on her left foot smashed by a falling board, I immediately knew it was bad. She was screaming bloody murder. There was blood everywhere. Her tears were fat, her fear palpable, and I needed to make it right. Though I hate driving, especially on any road with more than 2 cars, I packed up my peanut in the car with her favorite things and some warm clothes and raced her to the ER. I carried her in and though I did not scream like Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment", I would have if the staff wasn't so efficient. I hadn't taken the time to truly look at her little toe because I'd gone into autopilot, but now we had time to be together...and I peeked.
She looked at me with those longing, big, brown eyes, eyelashes glued together with tears, and asked, "Is it bad? Is it bad, Mama?"
"It's alright, Peanut. We are going to get you better. These people here are going to help us. Just hold onto Mommy if you feel scared." And she squeezed. And I squeezed back. Also the tears. Her toe looked so, so terrible and it was. I wondered how this tiny thing had suffered, what she must have felt and thought, when pain, pain like that is still relatively new. I thought about all the hurts I'd ever had, all the hurts from which I will need to shield her, all the shoring up, all the armor, and I wished that I could take the hit. I silently prayed, "Why didn't you let it happen to me? Why did it have to be her?" And I became steely because we had hours to go and I was angry and hurt for her and I could only be by her side and bombard her with love and comfort. (Broken)
She was wheeled into a room for an X-ray to make sure that her toe wasn't broken. It was cold in the room and made heavy by the lead aprons we wore to shield our organs from the radiation. Hers was a ladybug. Mine was blue. She lay there on that table, following directions and holding still, tiny tears falling to her ears, balling her hands into fists. She was pulling it together. She looked at me and I smiled and she at me. She got to wheel herself back in a wheelchair (a wheelchair!) to our triage curtain and she beamed. Though she could "feel her heartbeat in her toe" we were coming to the other side of this ordeal. When she was back on her bed, I got on with her and we cuddled. She asked me if it was okay for me to be on the bed with her to which I replied, "Mommy makes her own rules when it comes to her babies. If you need me here, then YES, it's more than okay."
After a long afternoon into evening, Virginie ended up losing her toenail and getting five stitches to close her toe. A piece of antibiotic gauze was put in place to hopefully facilitate regrowth of her nail. She will have to get a boot to walk and is taking antibiotics to protect against infection. Sutures, rather than stitches, were used to close her toe because, as the doctor said, "This is not like the stitches in her chin that we put in to allow minimal scarring. This is her toe and it needs more time to heal. If it scars, it's in a place where no one can see it...unless she is wearing sandals." She'll have her tiny scars tucked on her foot, shared only with those she allows close.
And so will I. Teeny, tiny little scars made each time I see them hurt, whether on accident or on purpose, lacerate my heart. I will see the stitching, the jagged lines where the skin came back together. Those are for the physical ouches. And of the psychological tears? The emotional punctures? Hidden wounds? As she lay on the suturing table, wrapped in the cocoon to prevent her from moving, fear, frustration, pain on her face, I put my nose to hers, felt her eyelashes on my cheek, and whispered to her about the unicorns and sweets we think about before we dream. We talked about how we were together and how I would never leave her, would always be nose to nose, eyelashes to cheek, butterfly kisses, even when I wasn't really there. She quieted herself, went inside, and she believed me. She trusted me. Even in her hurt she believed that I would give her everything I had, that I was somehow feeling her pain or that I would at least walk with her through it. Comfort.
My husband is not here and we are not having a crazy display of elegant foods. I won't drink a mimosa in bed, nor will I sit with my feet up or even sleep past 6:45 am. I won't play queen for a day or do "something special for myself," at least not the kind of special that many believe moms are looking for. I am relieved that my girl is alright. I am proud of myself for getting in the car and driving her to the hospital and keeping a cool head. I am grateful for the people in my life who know what an accomplishment that is for me.
While sitting in the emergency room before Virginie was seen by a doctor I thought, "My baby will be scarred. She's only six years old and something is already broken. Her perfect little feet, her tiny toenails are gone." Yes, I know it's ridiculous. When they are those cute, little cherubs, smooth-skinned and innocent, we try so desperately to keep them clean of wounds, bruises, hurts. They are the best of us, the good in us, the pure. Each fall, scrape, tumble left me holding my breath, hoping it wouldn't be too bad, that it would heal quickly and leave no trace on their bodies or in their hearts.
Two days after she was hurt, Virginie is hopping on one foot through the house, laughing and smiling and chatting as she always has. Her foot is wrapped and the gauze is looking worse for the wear even after just two days. She's been fixed, is on the mend, will come out unscathed if not unscarred. But it's me, Mommy, who is taking a little longer to heal. Being a mom (for me) means going all the way in. Into the pain, into the hurt, into the past, into the joy, into a depth of love that frankly, nothing in my life before ever prepared me for. It's breaking and putting myself back together all the time. Its carrying the hurt with them and for them. It is doing my best to keep them from being broken.
We're together this morning and we are whole.
Happy Mother's Day.
(c) 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
January 2nd usually marked the return to normalcy or a soft landing like the movie stuntmen made onto that huge pillow at the end of the holiday circus. Rather the celebration of the Christ child and the baby new year than me. While I didn't want to be forgotten completely, I was happy to get back to life as we knew it with a tiny secret tucked behind my ear, kissed there by the aliens who, in the dead of night, have always given me promises of a good future, not just resolutions but truths to which I was completely committed. I still believe in the probability of great achievement even in the face of total chaos and seemingly impossible obstacles. Though I have never been good at the holidays, what with all the celebrating and wide opened hearts on display, the arrival of the girls brought a chance for me to live them with different eyes, a more gracious heart, and a sense of wonder and hope.
Every year since I can remember, the arrival of the "winter holidays" has brought a little bit of tension, a little bit of the blues, and an eerie calm like the dead quiet of the first inches of a massive Nor'easter falling heavily on whichever sleeping town or block I was living. It feels somewhere between a whisper and the ringing in the air after a scream. I can hear my breathing. Sometimes I can see my breath. Always I am aware that I am alive even if I can't move from the cold or the fear, and am fully aware of my surroundings even if I want to run. Always I feel awkwardly alone even when surrounded by crowds of family and friends. Alone but not quite lonely. Here, but not quite here. I can't be lonely with the two people standing on my neck, whispering in my ear, chatterbugging to my face. Maybe that's why they came to me. To connect me to place, pry open my wintered heart.
2013 was hardly different from previous years--family ups and downs, community involvement, extracurriculars, doctors' visits, health checks and scares and reassurances, travel, work, parenting, craziness. I don't think I have counted my "best or worst" years since I was a child when the best or the worst was defined by gifts I received or didn't, skills I acquired or didn't, loves found or lost. Now, every year starts off full of promise, more than 1/2 full with the days firmly on one side, ahead of me. Every year I know that I will peel back the onion to find some other truth about myself, my soul's journey, my desire, and my fulfillment. I make no promises other than to try to remain open to whatever comes, to avoid (or try not to bring it all the way to insane clown posse meltdown) the panicked shut down when the world delivers what I expected but for which I had somehow been poorly prepared. At the beginning of every year I have promised myself, "This is the year for me. This is the year I will find the path, stay on it, actualize." I say this every year. I believe it every time. I don't write the directions, don't set the map in stone and quickly wander from the path...or perhaps discover the one worn in the ground, not paved.
I followed the breadcrumbs back to a language I'd almost forgotten I spoke. Many speak it more eloquently, some with grace and agility, others flexibility, but when I speak to them too, they understand. In 2013 I returned to dance. When I was a girl who hated her voice and was sure no one cared what I might have to say, there was dance. When I needed to free myself from the torment of the bad years and celebrate the joys of the good, there was dance. When I had a secret to keep, something that I needed to protect, I could dance around it, seal it in. And then I stopped, quit moving altogether, froze, and then allowed myself to believe that another form of exercise, maybe the machines at the gym, maybe an abs class, could suffice. They couldn't. Not yoga, even with all the breath and meditating and connection to the divine, warmed my soul. It was dance that first connected me to my own life force. Reclaiming it was so helpful to everything in my life.
When I was a little girl, my mother asked for the same things for her birthday, Christmas, and Mother's Day. Peace and quiet and for everyone to get along. We thought that was the craziest request on earth. "That's all she wanted?" I'd wonder. What a waste of a rub of the lamp. You can have anything three little cherubs and a workaholic husband can offer! I get it now. As I reanimate the creative back into my life, each day becomes mine to do with it what I will. I can ease myself out of the tepid pool of suburban monotony and feel passion burning me up again. I want that more than I want anything else.
I have, and have admitted, struggling with the daily expectations of raising children and running a household. I want to do them both well. Hell, I want to do everything well, but I believe that I bring more to everything in my life with the creative spirit and energy weaving throughout. At the start of every year, I remind myself of this. Somewhere along the way the priorities shift and I find myself making excuses, putting off making art, writing, dancing, and allow the minutiae of parenting and being married to be more important. I'm going to do better this year. At least I am going to try.
My husband was gone for Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years and my birthday. He has been for nearly every one of these holidays since we've been together. I have stopped allowing myself to suffer this and surely cannot let his absence during these days define the entire year. Or me. Or my life. I don't want to be defined by absence or by a "lack of." But when he returns and asks what I want for all the holidays I missed, it's not a necklace, a scarf, socks, or new boots that I am after. It is some of that quiet, some of that peace, some of the space where I can create or believe myself able again. It is solitude and my own communion with the end of the year and the start of my new one.
My birthday starts up the music, begins the lightly playing song that guides me through the year. It is wintry and quiet and moody and grey and cloudy followed by bursts of sun in a cerulean blue sky, cold as hell frozen over, that thaws into a promising spring. I've bundled up into it and survived the shortest day of the year and the longest parade of holiday celebrations. And on this day, I danced and wrote and drew a little sketch. Running head first, out the window, to the stunt man's pillow down below. To the new year. Mine.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
My friend A has been spending Mother's Day alone for the past couple of years. Mother's Day for her, and for many I've heard, is indeed a mother's day. A day to do with it what she will. A went into the city this year, New York City, and did a bit of shopping and visited a museum. I went to the city too on both Saturday and Sunday to visit with my parents, my sister, my brother, and their families. My parents and my sister were staying downtown in Battery Park City at a luxury hotel with gorgeous views of the Statue of Liberty. Both days were wonderful for everyone, truly. No real conflict, no stress, no heartache or heartbreak. When visits with my family are few and far between, a weekend as lovely as the one that passed is a treat.
And yet there is this. On the one day set aside for me, a mother, I was running. Taking the train in the early morning after dressing the girls, doing their hair, making sure they'd eaten enough and had snacks for the ride in, carrying asthma meds, sippy cups, changes of clothes, toys, crayons, and coloring books. Before 8:45 am, I'd done more than most would do all day. My husband, not one for pomp and circumstance, grabbed a rose plant and card on his trip back from Dunkin Donuts, where he snagged Mother's Day sweets for the girls to inspire them to be kind to Mommy and get a move on in the morning. I gave him the words I believed he meant to share and told him that honoring his mother with roses, her favorite flower, was a pleasure and an honor. This is not a lie. I truly loved that woman. She was selfless, giving, feisty, and loving. We gave in the same way. Completely, totally, quietly wishing there were more moments for just us. After she passed, I spoke with an incredible psychic who gave me a moment with dear Paulette that still leaves me breathless.
It seems a shame there is just this one day. Only one? One day to express gratitude for the countless ways the mother of the house holds it down and keeps it running wearing lipstick and cute shit, strutting her stuff and cleaning poop. It's not just the household tasks, the bills, the drop offs, boo boos and play dates. The mother's heart is the pulse of the family, regardless of whether she is home all day or working outside of the home. When she shines there is light everywhere and when she is down the house is less comforting, scarier. Moms know this. I do anyway and I fear a cold heart stealing from my girls' childhoods, even if it is mine, so I give to them, share with them, show them love, love, love. They are too young to show me with more than affection and insanely cute hand-mades. Too young to give me my space, my time, my "room of my own" without someone else to take care of them. They are still little and my presence assures and reassures, that all is right in the world. My smile, my kind words, my listening ear tells them that there is a place in the world for them reserved by their loving mother.
They sat with me, held my hands, kissed my cheeks, and told me how much they loved me. I knew it to be true. Thanked them and counted myself among the blessed. Not just blessed to have children, but to be loved by such wonderful humans. It is intoxicating, heady, chakra spinning, and sometimes exhausting. Sometimes the love I want is quiet. Is a place for just myself. A place for my thoughts, my heart, my dreams, my heartbeat resonating just for me. It is a place where I can rejuvenate so that I can keep doing what I do. On this day, Mother's Day, I never made it to my own room, to my own space.
And like that, Mother's Day was over. We were home in time for me to get those dirty, little birds in the tub, scrub them down, read a story, and have Didier pick up some take out for everyone. After clearing plates and trays, I got the people to brush their teeth, get ready for bed, and pass out. There are photos, proof of what a wonderful weekend it was. I know it was. But I missed the chance to honor myself and after Mother's Day, there are never very many of those. For me.
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
