The topic of "readiness" has been coming up for me a lot lately. Becoming a mother has proven to me that there are some things you can never be ready for and no amount of advice or well-intended preparation can make you feel truly "ready" when that which you've been waiting for finally arrives. Not all things can be studied and then assessed before the time comes to put your skills to the test. This is true of labor. Contractions were described to me as "really intense menstrual cramps" and I found them to be quite unlike cramps. They were unlike everything. And moments that could be imagined or given shape by what we see in the media would prove to be all together different when it was me under the lights, facing what seemed to be the unending, impossible feat of pushing another human being out of my body. I discovered a new 10 on the pain scale that Fourth of July day and felt the rush of hormones that made said pain disappear the instant my daughter was placed on my chest. What could one possibly do to be "ready" for childbirth and instant motherhood? What course could teach the physical pain involved in that process and in your recovery? What device could simulate not only having a baby to care for but a body that was being held together by a growing baby, now torn apart and needing to be put back together? My tendency to judge myself or others as being "ready" or "not yet ready" for anything has softened as I know that readiness, or the lack thereof, does not mean you can't figure it out when you get there. Nothing is a greater motivator for preparedness than immediate, urgent need.
My daughter has been the great eraser of what used to be in my life. Since she has come along, my time is spent in a different way than it has ever been spent before, and when actions of the past are entertained, they are done with her in mind (which changes them). I have welcomed this change because I understood it was part of the deal. Still, there are things I have clung to as evidence that I could maintain some semblance of myself as I understood myself to be. I wanted to be back into my pre-pregnancy clothes very quickly. I wanted to rub a magical serum into my skin to ensure stretch marks would disappear completely. I wanted to do lots of yoga. I wanted to know that I could be a mother and still be "me." It doesn't work that way, as it turns out. What I have discovered in not having those little things I want is that I am being given more completely to the many things I do have now that I can't have the same body, the same clothes, the same schedule that I had before. Even the articles of clothing that I have gotten back into don't fit the same. My body has shifted and it takes more than gaining or losing weight for my clothes to embrace me the way they once did.
I have reached out to other mothers for encouragement and inspiration and have found myself disappointed at hearing that "it takes time", or that stretch marks don't just disappear, or that certain things won't ever be the same again. At times I would have preferred they lie to me and tell me at a certain day and time I would look down and find myself in the body I once knew...or that it could be achieved by eating Girl Scout Cookies and watching Oprah. Somebody finally said something that got through to me about what this is all really about. She said, "You have a beautiful baby and you would never trade her to have the body you had before." Never have truer words been spoken. Not only did it help me to lighten up and be thankful for the body that built my daughter, it reminded me of the deeper truth which speaks about a lot more than jeans and stretch marks.
We long for what used to be because it is what we know best. We know exactly how to be in familiar surroundings. Comfort and confidence don't come readily when we are thrust into new life experiences that we may not feel ready for. Mental preparation does not always include emotional preparedness. The simple fact is that you can't be where you are and where you were at the same time. I have played that lethal bargaining game too many times -- "Well, maybe I'll just hang on to that part of my past," "Maybe I'll just let go of the really bad stuff and keep the good stuff," "I'll do the exact same thing, I'll just do it differently this time." This would be like putting only one foot outside the door and saying we've moved on. Going to the next level means trading the level that came before it. You may have indeed needed the lower level, but you don't get to stay there when you're on your way up.
Just as I would not trade my daughter so that I could keep from muffin-topping over my favorite jeans without the help of Spanx, I would also not trade the peace I have found, the sense of purpose and importance I feel in my motherhood, the integrity I have in my lifestyle for one more shopping excursion for something besides diapers, for spontaneous 10 p.m. movie nights, for weekend getaways, for one more go at a painful and intense relationship. I like "me time" just as much as the next guy, but if it comes down to a choice between that or my daughter, I choose her every time. And while I still sometimes linger in the stairwell between levels, I know I can't move up and move down at the same time. I know the view gets better when I climb and that the lower levels no longer stock what I'm looking for. I am thankful for the hands that all at once urge me on, wipe clean the steps I have sullied, and move things around to make room for bigger love and better things to come -- the hands that give, that take away and that help me to leave so much behind.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
I've been waiting for you
Dear Laylah,
It's after 2 a.m. and you are sleeping soundly next to me. I always judge the way you look before I go to sleep as some sort of indication as to how long it will be before you wake up. I usually grossly overestimate your sleep time which each night enables me to give myself permission to toil away into the wee small hours. I have gone back and forth about this since you started sleeping through the night. I have sacrificed some much-needed daytime energy to be awake during these very quiet hours and I have felt frustrated with myself for doing it and guilty for lacking the energy the next day, yet I have kept repeating it night after night. I have come to the truth that this is simply what I like to do. It is the only time of the day where I can pursue my own interests for the length of time that I choose instead of what time will allow between feedings.
I saw J.K. Rowling on Oprah the other day and discovered that she wrote Harry Potter's first book entirely by hand while her baby daughter slept next to her. She too was a single mom and did what it took to deliver her passions and still be present for her daughter all day. Well Laylah your mother does not have anything like Harry Potter within me waiting to be written, but I will stay up well past your bedtime to search for inspiration, to feed my passions and to create what will shape our lives together. I can't know now what I will think and feel when I look back on what I created during these first months of your life. Most of what I wrote when I was 15-19 years old or so is completely wretched but what strikes me about it, and is the reason I keep it still, is that I kept writing. I wrote as if I would have been surprised to feel beneath my shoulder blades and not find wings there. I wrote what I felt, what I hoped to feel, what I wanted others to feel for me. I wrote and I shared what I wrote. The writing itself is an embarrassment to me now, but the fact that I was willing to do it makes me proud. I'm not sure why I stopped writing but I thank you for filling my heart to the brim with inspiration and for being the reason I search for what Kahlil Gibran calls "the pain of too much tenderness."
Years before you were born one of my friends said to me, "It takes a lot of energy to pretend you're someone you're not." I responded that maybe that is why we're all so tired. After so much time spent behaving in a way I was told to behave, and then acting in a way I thought people I wanted to be like would act, and then not having any idea how to just be, it struck me that when you were born, being your mother did not take that same plotting and planning. I spent my entire life without you and then suddenly you were here and I could no longer imagine a life without you in it. How can that be? How can a life include nothing even remotely related to another person and upon meeting them the entire scope of your life changes unanticipatedly? My first words to you were, "Hi, I've been waiting for you." And maybe expectant parents aren't just waiting for a person to come into their lives, but perhaps we are waiting for that part of ourselves that knows exactly how to be to flourish.
This is not to say that parenting comes naturally. There are many facets of your care that I have found through google searches, advice from friends, and parenting books. It is not intuitive to know how to soothe you. I might be able to sing but as it turns out that doesn't do a whole lot of good for a brand new baby coping with an entirely foreign environment. What I mean to say is that motherhood itself -- the heartache, the depth, the intensity of it -- it is far too important to contrive. In many instances what is needed does not allow for the time it takes to process what others will think or to choose from a list of options that will make me appear in a certain way to a certain crowd. The energy we might spend trying to posture ourselves moment to moment is instead poured into the person who needs it -- and that, my beloved, is you.
I knew the night that you received your first round of shots that motherhood would surely break my heart. If I could take every shot for you and endure every pain to ensure that you would not have to, I would -- in an instant, without hesitation. Your grandparents told your Aunt Leah and I when we were children that they would step in front of a bus for us. As a child this sincere declaration was terrifying because all I heard in their statement was that they were going to get hit by a bus. The night you dealt with the side effects of the shots you received I finally understood what my parents had meant by that. The heartbreak is that they never could endure pain for us and I will never be able to endure your pain for you. Certainly there is a lot we can do as parents to provide protection and security and it is a daily effort to meet your needs in those ways, but you will learn just like everyone else does through the choices you make, the things you wish you had done differently, and the words you wish you could take back. Laylah I so want to give you the best possible upbringing that will encourage you to be an empathetic, trusting, and secure adult. My best will always be flawed but you must know that while I understand that there will be more dreams of my own to be had, more life to live once you grow up and move out of the house, more people and more love to enjoy in my life -- while I know all of that to be true, it certainly seems right now that you were the whole point of being here in the first place. You make me want to live forever just so I can have more of you.
This is love, Laylah. We grow it every day and nothing can diminish it. Unlike romantic love, no one would caution us against it or question whether or not it is indeed love. We get to choose what it looks like but it will always, unequivocally be love. And mine will forevermore be yours.
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
-- Kahlil Gibran
It's after 2 a.m. and you are sleeping soundly next to me. I always judge the way you look before I go to sleep as some sort of indication as to how long it will be before you wake up. I usually grossly overestimate your sleep time which each night enables me to give myself permission to toil away into the wee small hours. I have gone back and forth about this since you started sleeping through the night. I have sacrificed some much-needed daytime energy to be awake during these very quiet hours and I have felt frustrated with myself for doing it and guilty for lacking the energy the next day, yet I have kept repeating it night after night. I have come to the truth that this is simply what I like to do. It is the only time of the day where I can pursue my own interests for the length of time that I choose instead of what time will allow between feedings.
I saw J.K. Rowling on Oprah the other day and discovered that she wrote Harry Potter's first book entirely by hand while her baby daughter slept next to her. She too was a single mom and did what it took to deliver her passions and still be present for her daughter all day. Well Laylah your mother does not have anything like Harry Potter within me waiting to be written, but I will stay up well past your bedtime to search for inspiration, to feed my passions and to create what will shape our lives together. I can't know now what I will think and feel when I look back on what I created during these first months of your life. Most of what I wrote when I was 15-19 years old or so is completely wretched but what strikes me about it, and is the reason I keep it still, is that I kept writing. I wrote as if I would have been surprised to feel beneath my shoulder blades and not find wings there. I wrote what I felt, what I hoped to feel, what I wanted others to feel for me. I wrote and I shared what I wrote. The writing itself is an embarrassment to me now, but the fact that I was willing to do it makes me proud. I'm not sure why I stopped writing but I thank you for filling my heart to the brim with inspiration and for being the reason I search for what Kahlil Gibran calls "the pain of too much tenderness."
Years before you were born one of my friends said to me, "It takes a lot of energy to pretend you're someone you're not." I responded that maybe that is why we're all so tired. After so much time spent behaving in a way I was told to behave, and then acting in a way I thought people I wanted to be like would act, and then not having any idea how to just be, it struck me that when you were born, being your mother did not take that same plotting and planning. I spent my entire life without you and then suddenly you were here and I could no longer imagine a life without you in it. How can that be? How can a life include nothing even remotely related to another person and upon meeting them the entire scope of your life changes unanticipatedly? My first words to you were, "Hi, I've been waiting for you." And maybe expectant parents aren't just waiting for a person to come into their lives, but perhaps we are waiting for that part of ourselves that knows exactly how to be to flourish.
This is not to say that parenting comes naturally. There are many facets of your care that I have found through google searches, advice from friends, and parenting books. It is not intuitive to know how to soothe you. I might be able to sing but as it turns out that doesn't do a whole lot of good for a brand new baby coping with an entirely foreign environment. What I mean to say is that motherhood itself -- the heartache, the depth, the intensity of it -- it is far too important to contrive. In many instances what is needed does not allow for the time it takes to process what others will think or to choose from a list of options that will make me appear in a certain way to a certain crowd. The energy we might spend trying to posture ourselves moment to moment is instead poured into the person who needs it -- and that, my beloved, is you.
I knew the night that you received your first round of shots that motherhood would surely break my heart. If I could take every shot for you and endure every pain to ensure that you would not have to, I would -- in an instant, without hesitation. Your grandparents told your Aunt Leah and I when we were children that they would step in front of a bus for us. As a child this sincere declaration was terrifying because all I heard in their statement was that they were going to get hit by a bus. The night you dealt with the side effects of the shots you received I finally understood what my parents had meant by that. The heartbreak is that they never could endure pain for us and I will never be able to endure your pain for you. Certainly there is a lot we can do as parents to provide protection and security and it is a daily effort to meet your needs in those ways, but you will learn just like everyone else does through the choices you make, the things you wish you had done differently, and the words you wish you could take back. Laylah I so want to give you the best possible upbringing that will encourage you to be an empathetic, trusting, and secure adult. My best will always be flawed but you must know that while I understand that there will be more dreams of my own to be had, more life to live once you grow up and move out of the house, more people and more love to enjoy in my life -- while I know all of that to be true, it certainly seems right now that you were the whole point of being here in the first place. You make me want to live forever just so I can have more of you.
This is love, Laylah. We grow it every day and nothing can diminish it. Unlike romantic love, no one would caution us against it or question whether or not it is indeed love. We get to choose what it looks like but it will always, unequivocally be love. And mine will forevermore be yours.
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
-- Kahlil Gibran
Friday, August 27, 2010
Keeping watch
My three month old daughter is inches away from my face staring at me with unblinking eye contact and experiments with new sounds and facial expressions to communicate with me. She pauses for my response, takes a deep breath and echoes my sounds back at me. While her communication develops and changes on an almost daily basis, I am struck by the realization that she is comfortable with our close and steady eye contact. In fact, it is necessary lest she miss something important about me or her environment that will strike her as something new -- just like her laughter and voice is new to me now. She has yet to become discomfited by our closeness and the intensity of our gaze.
I don't remember myself, my behaviors or my thoughts at a very young age so I cannot comment on what it was like for me -- but I have noticed that some 1 and 2 year old children have already learned that eye contact can be intimidating and uncomfortable and they cope by looking down or away when someone (sometimes even a parent) wants to speak to them closely. By the age of 15, I was already consciously aware of the entirely squirm-inducing experience of holding eye contact. I was brought up as a teenager in a church youth group where hugs, closeness and the words "I love you" were as common as conversation about boys, clothes and music. While I did not feign my genuine love and respect for the friends I made there, I always had to force the closeness we shared. A frequent meditation given in my youth group began by instructing us to find a partner that we did not already know. We would soon discover that we would be looking into said partner's eyes for up to 15 minutes as the central focus of the entire meditation. It was excruciating! Any similar activity -- singing while making eye contact with a partner, hugs at the end of the night, and open "heart talks" in our small groups would prove equally challenging for me. In the past year I was at a weekend retreat where the aforementioned meditation was given and I discovered that even after the four years of practice that I had during high school and the 13 years that have passed since that time in my life began, maintaining intense eye contact -- even with someone I love -- is still probably one of the most uncomfortable and difficult things for me to do. I simply learned how to fake my way through those experiences, the hugs and the I love you's -- which is not to say I didn't mean it when I would say it, it's just to say that it would have been so much easier if I didn't feel I had to say the words out loud or press my heart against another person's heart.
At this same time in my life I was learning how to be on stage, how to compel to a large number of people, how to convey the message of a song or a prepared talk. Most often, I would pick a spot on the opposite wall to sing to or I would dart back and forth between two or three pairs of reasonably comfortable eyes. I soon learned instead to sing to God and began looking up or cloing my eyes. It became comfortable and easy to be relatively open with a large group of people. My voice grew and my confidence as a singer, writer and speaker grew with it. During that same time frame I found myself the subject of a man's gaze which was captivating and encapsulating and slowly the most important thing I knew about myself became whether or not I had his love, his attention, his appreciation. I sought results for my actions not so that I could feel good for me, but so that I could feel deserving of his love and watching eyes. Suddenly, after so many uncomfortable experiences with others, I found the eyes that I could stare into unblinking. I found someone who I didn't have to fake hugs for, someone that I could say aloud that I loved without feeling awkward. As it turns out, there was trouble with this set up.
7 years and many heartaches later, I have discovered that the difficulty in finding these things with only one person is that once that person is gone we will have to completely redefine what we understand ourselves to be. It's incredibly simple to say or to intellectually understand but the reality is that many of us hold these contingent beliefs subconsciously and discovering that they live at the seed level of our every thought and action is an incredibly rude awakening. Now, of course it can no longer matter what he did or didn't want, what he did or didn't do, what we are or aren't or will ever be, it matters only that it is time to reconnect with what is actually important about me, and not what is only important to me if it is important to him.
Now I am a single mom and really, at the deepest level the only thing that has changed about her father and I is that our daughter is watching us now. She is digesting new information about her life, her surroundings and me as her mother every day. I set her down to brush my teeth and after a minute or two of not being able to see me she cries. I pick her up and talk to her and she is content once more. She watches me fold laundry, clean the bathroom, put away clothes amazed and always unblinking, but should I leave her alone in a room for nothing but a minute it seems that her entire sense of security and contentment is threatened. For these precious days, I am her everything. She wakes up to me, she responds to me and I am the last voice and face she experiences before she rests at night. Most of the time there is no other person to pass her to should I become distressed. In the captivation of her gaze I am being forced to revisit the reality that eye contact becomes uncomfortable, it isn't just that way from the beginning. I can only hope that as I meet her needs for security and safety she will learn that a lot of people, not just her mother, are deserving of trust, affection and openness. In the process I am learning the unmatched gift of physical closeness and I am leaning into her infinite affections. If my daughter grows up and chooses consciously or subconsciously to emulate me I want to know that she will be carving out a life filled with deeply trusting relationships, security, integrity and grace. I do not have to seek my daughter's affections because she gives them freely and in so doing frees me to open my heart because it's the right thing to do and not because it will win me some sort of elusive prize.
A stranger this week looked at my infant daughter and summed up my entire point saying, "That is the glance of God." And it is in that unwavering and unblinking glance that I rediscover myself -- not just as a mother, sister, friend, daughter, granddaughter, singer, writer, dog owner, lover of country music, Libra, but as the whole person who is all of those things at once.
I don't remember myself, my behaviors or my thoughts at a very young age so I cannot comment on what it was like for me -- but I have noticed that some 1 and 2 year old children have already learned that eye contact can be intimidating and uncomfortable and they cope by looking down or away when someone (sometimes even a parent) wants to speak to them closely. By the age of 15, I was already consciously aware of the entirely squirm-inducing experience of holding eye contact. I was brought up as a teenager in a church youth group where hugs, closeness and the words "I love you" were as common as conversation about boys, clothes and music. While I did not feign my genuine love and respect for the friends I made there, I always had to force the closeness we shared. A frequent meditation given in my youth group began by instructing us to find a partner that we did not already know. We would soon discover that we would be looking into said partner's eyes for up to 15 minutes as the central focus of the entire meditation. It was excruciating! Any similar activity -- singing while making eye contact with a partner, hugs at the end of the night, and open "heart talks" in our small groups would prove equally challenging for me. In the past year I was at a weekend retreat where the aforementioned meditation was given and I discovered that even after the four years of practice that I had during high school and the 13 years that have passed since that time in my life began, maintaining intense eye contact -- even with someone I love -- is still probably one of the most uncomfortable and difficult things for me to do. I simply learned how to fake my way through those experiences, the hugs and the I love you's -- which is not to say I didn't mean it when I would say it, it's just to say that it would have been so much easier if I didn't feel I had to say the words out loud or press my heart against another person's heart.
At this same time in my life I was learning how to be on stage, how to compel to a large number of people, how to convey the message of a song or a prepared talk. Most often, I would pick a spot on the opposite wall to sing to or I would dart back and forth between two or three pairs of reasonably comfortable eyes. I soon learned instead to sing to God and began looking up or cloing my eyes. It became comfortable and easy to be relatively open with a large group of people. My voice grew and my confidence as a singer, writer and speaker grew with it. During that same time frame I found myself the subject of a man's gaze which was captivating and encapsulating and slowly the most important thing I knew about myself became whether or not I had his love, his attention, his appreciation. I sought results for my actions not so that I could feel good for me, but so that I could feel deserving of his love and watching eyes. Suddenly, after so many uncomfortable experiences with others, I found the eyes that I could stare into unblinking. I found someone who I didn't have to fake hugs for, someone that I could say aloud that I loved without feeling awkward. As it turns out, there was trouble with this set up.
7 years and many heartaches later, I have discovered that the difficulty in finding these things with only one person is that once that person is gone we will have to completely redefine what we understand ourselves to be. It's incredibly simple to say or to intellectually understand but the reality is that many of us hold these contingent beliefs subconsciously and discovering that they live at the seed level of our every thought and action is an incredibly rude awakening. Now, of course it can no longer matter what he did or didn't want, what he did or didn't do, what we are or aren't or will ever be, it matters only that it is time to reconnect with what is actually important about me, and not what is only important to me if it is important to him.
Now I am a single mom and really, at the deepest level the only thing that has changed about her father and I is that our daughter is watching us now. She is digesting new information about her life, her surroundings and me as her mother every day. I set her down to brush my teeth and after a minute or two of not being able to see me she cries. I pick her up and talk to her and she is content once more. She watches me fold laundry, clean the bathroom, put away clothes amazed and always unblinking, but should I leave her alone in a room for nothing but a minute it seems that her entire sense of security and contentment is threatened. For these precious days, I am her everything. She wakes up to me, she responds to me and I am the last voice and face she experiences before she rests at night. Most of the time there is no other person to pass her to should I become distressed. In the captivation of her gaze I am being forced to revisit the reality that eye contact becomes uncomfortable, it isn't just that way from the beginning. I can only hope that as I meet her needs for security and safety she will learn that a lot of people, not just her mother, are deserving of trust, affection and openness. In the process I am learning the unmatched gift of physical closeness and I am leaning into her infinite affections. If my daughter grows up and chooses consciously or subconsciously to emulate me I want to know that she will be carving out a life filled with deeply trusting relationships, security, integrity and grace. I do not have to seek my daughter's affections because she gives them freely and in so doing frees me to open my heart because it's the right thing to do and not because it will win me some sort of elusive prize.
A stranger this week looked at my infant daughter and summed up my entire point saying, "That is the glance of God." And it is in that unwavering and unblinking glance that I rediscover myself -- not just as a mother, sister, friend, daughter, granddaughter, singer, writer, dog owner, lover of country music, Libra, but as the whole person who is all of those things at once.
Friday, July 23, 2010
God Bless the Child
Dear Laylah,
You arrived with triumphant fanfare on the Fourth of July. You waited until the stroke of midnight to begin requesting your release into the world and eight hours later you were placed onto my chest and we said hello and made eye contact for the first time. I have always imagined the romance of such a moment but I was humbled to discover that it is not something that can be anticipated. There is simply no way to imagine in advance what it will feel like to be a mother, to have the child inside of you suddenly forever on the outside. You’ve been here now for three weeks and I wanted to share a few things about what came before you were born.
I waited a while to begin sharing that I was pregnant with you. I made a few calls to my family and then waited several more months to share the news with anyone else – even those that I desperately wanted to know about you. I knew that it was a fragile time for both you and I. I wanted to protect you as you grew in those early days of gestation. Moreover, it was the last time where you and I would lead an entirely private existence. It is only natural that once you are alive in the world, you become the business of many others besides just me. People greet you with curiosity, care and concern and my pride as your mother has taken over as I want to share your face with the world. The phone calls and messages come in daily to see how the new baby is adjusting and how her mother is handling this dramatic life change. But in the beginning, it was just you and I. I woke up with you, carried you with me throughout each day and went to bed with you each night as the most tender and gentle part of my life – so tender it had to be cradled long before your birth.
Once people knew you were coming many guesses were made about the kind of person you would become, what your preferences would be, and what you might come to offer the world. All of these speculations were based on what each person knew about your parents. For example, it would seem likely that you would have a future in music and skinny legs, among other things. I wanted to tell you now that you’re here how clearly it strikes me that human design is not a formula where 1 + 1 = 2. It’s true you may carry similar physical characteristics and be influenced by our mannerisms, but here you are – your own person entirely. You arrive with the choices of your ancestors, your parents and your own traveled soul. You, like each of us, get to choose who you will become in this life and while your mother and father may have preferences about who that person will be, WE do not get to choose – only you do.
My dear friend told me this week that you and I will share so many things that are difficult to foresee. Right now the only thing I know for sure about you is that you are beautiful and your watching eyes suggest you are already much older than the three weeks you’ve been alive. I know that you will not have to wonder a single a day in your life whether or not you are loved. I know that you have changed my forever and for you I will always give my best, knowing that it will inevitably be imperfect. I know that I cannot always protect you as I could while you were in my womb and that my inability to do so will give you the necessary growth experiences to inform your character as it develops and responds to your destiny. I suspect you will make us laugh and know that you will continue to multiply our joys and lessen our sorrows.
Laylah, it will be a while before I can explain this to you in a way that you will cognitively understand, but you are teaching me the deepest and truest love I’ve ever known. I spent 26 entire years thinking of my own needs first and doing everything I could to make sure they were met. I came first even when it was not the kindest or most mature choice to make. Because of you, I am learning how to share in a way that transforms. I am glad that taking care of you is the most important thing I have ever done with my life. Even though you give millions of reasons to love you, it is not for those reasons that I do -- it is for no reason at all and it reaches its arms all the way around my life and deep into my heart. You will never know who I was before you came into my life because I will never be her again. Becoming your mother made me the whole woman I will need to be in order to raise you. Thank you for choosing me and thank God you will not be the sum of parts, instead you will forever be Laylah Emmanuelle . . . something entirely new.
“Them that’s got shall get
them that’s not shall lose
so the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that’s got his own
That’s got his own.”
You arrived with triumphant fanfare on the Fourth of July. You waited until the stroke of midnight to begin requesting your release into the world and eight hours later you were placed onto my chest and we said hello and made eye contact for the first time. I have always imagined the romance of such a moment but I was humbled to discover that it is not something that can be anticipated. There is simply no way to imagine in advance what it will feel like to be a mother, to have the child inside of you suddenly forever on the outside. You’ve been here now for three weeks and I wanted to share a few things about what came before you were born.
I waited a while to begin sharing that I was pregnant with you. I made a few calls to my family and then waited several more months to share the news with anyone else – even those that I desperately wanted to know about you. I knew that it was a fragile time for both you and I. I wanted to protect you as you grew in those early days of gestation. Moreover, it was the last time where you and I would lead an entirely private existence. It is only natural that once you are alive in the world, you become the business of many others besides just me. People greet you with curiosity, care and concern and my pride as your mother has taken over as I want to share your face with the world. The phone calls and messages come in daily to see how the new baby is adjusting and how her mother is handling this dramatic life change. But in the beginning, it was just you and I. I woke up with you, carried you with me throughout each day and went to bed with you each night as the most tender and gentle part of my life – so tender it had to be cradled long before your birth.
Once people knew you were coming many guesses were made about the kind of person you would become, what your preferences would be, and what you might come to offer the world. All of these speculations were based on what each person knew about your parents. For example, it would seem likely that you would have a future in music and skinny legs, among other things. I wanted to tell you now that you’re here how clearly it strikes me that human design is not a formula where 1 + 1 = 2. It’s true you may carry similar physical characteristics and be influenced by our mannerisms, but here you are – your own person entirely. You arrive with the choices of your ancestors, your parents and your own traveled soul. You, like each of us, get to choose who you will become in this life and while your mother and father may have preferences about who that person will be, WE do not get to choose – only you do.
My dear friend told me this week that you and I will share so many things that are difficult to foresee. Right now the only thing I know for sure about you is that you are beautiful and your watching eyes suggest you are already much older than the three weeks you’ve been alive. I know that you will not have to wonder a single a day in your life whether or not you are loved. I know that you have changed my forever and for you I will always give my best, knowing that it will inevitably be imperfect. I know that I cannot always protect you as I could while you were in my womb and that my inability to do so will give you the necessary growth experiences to inform your character as it develops and responds to your destiny. I suspect you will make us laugh and know that you will continue to multiply our joys and lessen our sorrows.
Laylah, it will be a while before I can explain this to you in a way that you will cognitively understand, but you are teaching me the deepest and truest love I’ve ever known. I spent 26 entire years thinking of my own needs first and doing everything I could to make sure they were met. I came first even when it was not the kindest or most mature choice to make. Because of you, I am learning how to share in a way that transforms. I am glad that taking care of you is the most important thing I have ever done with my life. Even though you give millions of reasons to love you, it is not for those reasons that I do -- it is for no reason at all and it reaches its arms all the way around my life and deep into my heart. You will never know who I was before you came into my life because I will never be her again. Becoming your mother made me the whole woman I will need to be in order to raise you. Thank you for choosing me and thank God you will not be the sum of parts, instead you will forever be Laylah Emmanuelle . . . something entirely new.
“Them that’s got shall get
them that’s not shall lose
so the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that’s got his own
That’s got his own.”
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
And so it begins.
I am beginning what will surely be a timid process for me. I have for as long as I can remember, considered myself a writer. However, when left to my own devices and without assignment from professors it seems I am a writer who has done very little writing. I think like a writer. I see the world through the eyes of a writer -- which to me means constantly considering how I might describe an event, a person, a feeling to someone else, how I might give a voice and words to something that is otherwise silent and unmoving. I thought for a while if I simply had a pen and paper on hand I might do more writing until I was gifted with a compact journal that I have carried with me ever since and written in only a handful of times. The last entry in that journal simply reads, "My life is new to me now and I am grateful." Such a sentence is a prime example of the kind of writing which makes me feel comfortable. It reveals nothing, it is ambiguous about both the past and the present it references, and it speaks nothing of the many human beings that have come and gone in what is considered "my life." I have known for a long time now that this kind of writing simply wouldn't cut it, that there was more to say if only I could become comfortable exposing parts of myself which would otherwise be kept private -- even from those who know me best. As I stand before the largest and most important changes of my life (more on that later) I realize that comfort is not a part of that kind of writing. Maybe it will come with ease eventually, but for someone like me it may never, ever be comfortable to be candid with an unknown reader. And so it begins . . . it's just time to start writing.
I was speaking with a poet whose writing I have come to admire deeply, sharing how afraid I felt to write about my life because of the many, many people I would inevitably be speaking about if I wrote with any kind of truth. I have been worried what my family and my friends would think or feel if I wrote my complete human response to this life. I have been overly concerned with those extended members of family whose approval I would likely never have if I spoke with any kind of honesty. This beautiful poet told me that she could relate to what I was feeling, that she had to confront the same concern in her writing as well until ultimately she decided, "It's my story, too." And so it is. I write simply because I don't know what else to do with all that I have seen. My young life is not marked by great tragedy, it is not scarred by wounds from abuse, and it is in so many ways a safe cocoon with which I have had a mostly loving relationship. I do not write in angst or regret. I write because I have eyes which see and because so many of those things need a witness. So here we are. I cannot promise I will always be unabashed but I will try always to be honest.
I started today because of a conversation I had with a dear friend this morning. I had one of those common moments where I think to myself, "I should write about that," except this time it came back to me again and again and wouldn't let me get away with casting it into the bottomless trash can of lost thoughts. My friend is moving from the place she has lived almost her entire life and it is causing unrest among her friends and family who will be staying behind in their various suburbs of Detroit. Even those who have seldom seen her while she is in town are rallying with woes, questions, and caution for her life. I would not likely be one of the people going through grief over her departure because I have seen that life has a way of keeping people together when there is more work to be done. However, I am also beginning my own journey at the end of the week which will take me a short distance out of Detroit for the summer then segue into a temporary yet huge relocation to Sedona, AZ where my parents now reside. So, the fact that my good friend is leaving does not pain me like it might her family and friends who will linger here in Detroit. She said something that in her unique, simple and special way touched me deeply. She said that everything comes to an end in one way or another. We have to let go of friends, lovers, marriages, family and pets. It is inevitable. Instead of doing everything in our power to avoid experiencing the pain of separation (i.e.; not moving, staying in a relationship that has already run its course, keeping our pets alive when they are suffering, etc.) we should just be thankful we had that love in the first place and understand that it's time to let it go.
In my packing I came across a shoe box filled with cards from my recent past. I just went through this same process one year ago when I moved from NYC to Detroit, so it was unnecessary for me to re-read all of the cards or shuffle through the entire contents of the box. However, I found my way to the ones which make my heart uneasy (the ones which used to make my heart glad). My life has yet to know more than one great, deep love and it is this man whose cards I have kept as private reminders of what we shared together. I read his words for what might have been the millionth time and I was struck by the memories therein, the depth and truth of how much he had loved me. I had "forgotten" about it or pushed it so far back in my mind so that I might be able to better understand the circumstances which define our relationship to each other now. My mind's way of coping is to deal in absolutes and I realized I had convinced myself that that love was more of a dream and what I live with now is the reality -- that if what we have now bears no resemblance to what we had then, only one of the two can possibly be real. I had invested my thoughts and attention into the much less romantic, much less thankful, much less open now. All it took were the kind and simple words of a friend who thought at the time she was speaking specifically about her own life experience to remind me how fortunate I am to have been loved deeply and to have been loved by him. He of course will not be the only one to love me as much or as sweetly and it is likely there will be a better chance of growing that love when it is someone else entirely. But I am thankful, so very thankful that we grew what will remain as "our love" with him. With a thankful heart I can bless and accept the past and welcome a new and different tomorrow.
I know now more than ever that new love is on its way, for which I am already deeply thankful.
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