Unravelled: Life as a Mother

I hope your life is wonderful too, and that you will be coming to visit us here soon.

love Maria

As I reread my letter before handing it over to my sister, I felt warm and quiet inside. I loved this woman I imagined I would become, this capable, vibrant, sexy, beautiful wife and mother. I knew that her toes were manicured, her purse well organized and her children well dressed and polite. I loved her life, the wholeness and fullness, joy and satisfaction in it.

I felt as if great things were possible for me, things that felt real and familiar even though there was no evidence of them in the life I was now living. I was a secret being kept hidden until the time was right, ripening and waiting for the external world to change before I could be revealed. Sitting beneath the maple tree in our backyard, I felt a deep quiet in the centre of myself as I imagined this woman I would become, as if it were already done, already true for me.

Each of us, in the most silent part of ourselves, has always known who we are. The eyes that look into ours from the image in the mirror recognize something that does not change with time or age. It would take me 24 more years to spiral into this centre of myself, to discover and begin living fully the sense of happiness and possibility that I dreamed for myself when I was 12. And, in the process, I would have to learn to be fiercely honest with myself and with others, and to unravel, with integrity and discernment, all my ideas about the way life is ‘supposed to be’.

Ten Days, Ten Years (#ulink_38d45edb-ea03-54ce-bdbc-bb5b483752d9)

Summer 1998 (#ulink_4b59ac31-18c9-5c54-863b-0e80b9835c7b)

Sunday

THE ONLY LIGHT IN THE ROOM CAME FROM A SINGLE KEROSENE lamp. I ran my hand along the wall beside the wide plank door, found a switch and flicked it on. A copper lamp with a fringed shade made a circle of light on the small wooden table next to the bed. I stood in the centre of the room and felt a sense of excitement growing in me. Although I had dreamed of this moment for years, envisioned this place many times before, I hadn’t ever truly believed it would happen. Looking around now, I felt as if something new was coming alive in me, a sense without form, poised to take shape.

The idea of a retreat had been planted in my heart in the first months after Hannah’s death. Holding her lifeless body in my arms, part of me had released itself; something in me had irreparably changed. I had known then that I would have to get away, to immerse myself in a silence that was only mine, if I were to ever understand fully what had happened, and to know what I was supposed to do next.

The Hermitage, the centre where I was now staying, had been established years ago by an elderly Mennonite couple who had converted a huge barn into several floors of small bedrooms, libraries and a kitchen/dining room. For a modest fee, guests were given their own room and bath, and encouraged to spend their days quietly on their own, reading, painting, writing or walking in the fields and surrounding woods. All meals, except for breakfast, were prepared by Mary and served to guests around the farm table in silence. It seemed the perfect space for my retreat.

Now, gazing around the room, I felt as if I had been transported into another, timeless place, far from any life I had ever known. The walls were panelled with knotted pine boards that climbed horizontally to the beamed ceiling. Two screened windows on wide hinges were open to the warm summer evening, their white lace curtains catching the breeze. A well-worn plank floor was partially covered by a brown braid rug, and along one wall, facing the largest window, was a double bed with a carved wooden headboard and muted patchwork quilt. A small teddy bear with button eyes and suede paws leaned against the pillow.

I laid my suitcase on the bed and began to unpack. I stacked my folded clothes in the drawers of the simple bureau, placed my new journal alongside a silver pen on the desk that sat beneath the window across from the bed; I slid several photographs of Claude, and our four children, Will, aged 10, Hannah, who would have been 7, Margaret, aged 3, and Madelaine, aged 2, under the edges of the window frame. In the drawers of the desk, I put pages of drawing paper, a few pencils and a deck of cards.

Beneath the second window, next to the dresser, was a small kneeling bench with a wooden shelf nailed to the wall above it. Here, I placed a votive candle and the gold cross I wore around my neck during the last year of Hannah’s life. When I had finished, I slid my suitcase under the bed, and sat down in the large, upholstered reading chair in the corner. From my vantage point, I could see fireflies blinking in the dark outside the windows. I sat quietly, not moving, feeling myself breathe, drinking it all in.

Mary had told me when I checked in that, apart from one other guest who was scheduled to arrive in a day or two, I would be on my own. Having shared a room with two younger sisters until I was 18, and never having lived on my own, the idea of such solitude and silence seemed too good to be true. As a wife and mother, I had become so accustomed to constant interruptions that I couldn’t help thinking, in the quiet of the room, that this peace couldn’t possibly last.

Sitting in the light of the flickering lamp, I heard a rustling noise just outside the window. I felt a shiver up my spine, feeling suddenly frightened of being alone, as if I might be smothered by the room’s unfamiliar silence. Quickly, I stood up and with a running start leaped across the floor onto the bed, just as I had as a little girl, afraid of monsters that lurked in dark corners. Undressing beneath the covers, I dropped my clothes on the floor and burrowed beneath the soft sheets and thick quilt. Closing my eyes against the dark and silence, I fell almost immediately into a deep sleep.

Winter 1988 (#ulink_d19a7994-5390-507f-9b9a-9c5c1eee265c)

Slip, Sliding Away

My body was not my own; every pore was yawning open. Even the air particles felt charged with anticipation, poised for what was about to happen. The nurse, standing on one side of the bed, was anchoring my foot in the stirrup. Claude, his eyes wild with excitement, was holding one of my outstretched hands in his.

The whole of my life, 25 years, I had known this moment was coming with the same sense of certainty in which we draw our next breath. What I did not know was whether this baby, my first child, was going to be a boy or a girl. Claude and I had chosen to be surprised at the moment of our baby’s birth. I felt grateful, in this breath between contractions, for the sense of excitement I felt, already loving this little person so wholly and completely without knowing for certain whether this baby was a Hannah or a Will.

The next contraction gripped my body, and all my attention was sucked into the sensation as I felt the weight in my pelvis bear down. I imagined the muscles around my cervix expanding and lengthening, the head of the baby, our baby, being pushed through. Dr Menon, a petite Indian woman, smiled encouragingly from between my legs at the foot of the bed.

‘You’re doing great,’ she murmured softly. ‘Once this contraction subsides, I’ll hold the mirror up so you can see the baby’s head.’

I nodded briefly, consumed by the intensity of the crescendo running through my body as I tried to remember to breathe. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the grip of the contraction released and my attention returned to what was happening in the room. Everyone got busy in the pause. The nurse helped the doctor position the mirror between my legs.

Claude asked, ‘Do you want some more ice chips? Is there anything you need?’

‘No, just keep holding my hand. I’m doing fine as long as I know you’re there.’

I had barely exhaled the last word when the next contraction began. It rose like a tsunami from the centre of my body. Relentlessly, it rolled outward into the whole of my awareness, swallowing any separate sense of myself. I gave myself to it – opening, offering and surrendering. Leaning forward, aware of nothing but sensation, I saw in the mirror my swollen, bulging vagina, impossibly stretched around a protruding, dark orb. Dr Menon took my left hand and placed it gently on the wetness between my legs.

‘That,’she whispered, ‘is your baby’s head.’

Some part of me, silently watching, suddenly woke up. As my fingers lightly caressed the slippery softness, the being whom until now had been an inherent part of my self and my body became in this moment its own separate person, touching me with its own, slippery head!

I took a deep breath and bore down again, feeling the burn of my perineum tearing. ‘Breathe,’ the nurse reminded me in a loud voice.

I pulled myself away from the centre of my body just long enough to expand my lungs and inhale another breath. I screwed up my face and bore down again. ‘Relax your face!’ the nurse spoke more loudly. I had never experienced such fullness in any moment; so many things were happening in my body and my awareness that it took everything I had to bring my attention to any single thing.

Then it happened. The intensely concentrated pressure pushing out from the centre of my body shifted slightly and began to slide. As the outer lips of my vagina became an expanding ring of fire around the baby’s head, Dr Menon leaned in, closer to my body, and the nurse lifted the mirror out of the way.

‘One more push, Maria. Make it a strong, good one,’ she said.

Claude gripped my hand more tightly and turned his gaze from my face towards what was happening between my legs. I opened my mouth, inhaled a huge breath, closed my lips around it and bore down. I felt as if my body was being forced through my legs, outside of itself. For months, whenever I had tried to imagine the moment of my baby’s birth, I always imagined my eyes closed as I concentrated on the last push. Now, instead, they remained fully open, allowing everything: the ring of fire, Claude’s anxious face, the sweeping second hand of the clock behind Dr Menon’s head, the relentless pushing, sliding, straining pressure inside me, between my legs.

Suddenly, the intensity popped, and I felt the baby’s body, distinctly, easing through me.

‘The head is out. Pant without pushing just for a moment.’ Dr Menon and the nurse busied themselves with a blue-bulbed syringe, clearing the baby’s mouth and throat. Claude started to cry, ‘I can see our baby’s face,’ he said.

I could no longer contain the pressure building inside me. In a single rush, the rest of our baby’s body slid into the world.

‘It’s a boy! It’s a boy!’ Claude exclaimed, tears rolling down his cheeks. The two of us couldn’t take our eyes off our son’s slippery form. Everyone, even the busiest nurse, was smiling. Although Will’s umbilical cord was still attached to the unborn placenta inside my body, Dr Menon laid him, cheek to breast, against my chest. As I held our son in my arms, he gazed at me quietly, not crying, awake. Claude leaned over and kissed the top of Will’s head, then turned to me. The two of us looked into each other, transparent and trembling as if we were seeing each other for the first time.

Dr Menon quietly interrupted our reverie by handing Claude a pair of scissors, instructing him where to make the cut in the umbilical cord. I stroked the top of Will’s head and brushed my lips across his cheek. Instinctively, his head turned towards my breast. I slipped my nipple between his lips and he began to suck. I felt the goodness being pulled from inside me. As he nursed, Will’s blue, deep-seeing eyes never left mine. For a single, timeless moment, the rest of the world vanished, and everything was my son and me.

Inheritance

Claude and I, giddy with happiness, were bringing our little boy home. As we wound through the quiet streets of our neighbourhood, I stared out the window and could not believe how much had changed in the two days since Will’s birth. Everything familiar looked different and somehow more beautiful, as if the light falling on it had passed through a special filter, allowing it to be seen more perfectly and precisely than before.

Glancing at Claude’s profile, I was filled with a sense that everything we had done together since we had married five years before had been in preparation for this. Each decision we had made, from finishing college to sending Claude to graduate school and saving enough money to buy our first home in a town with excellent schools, 45 minutes from Claude’s parents, had been part of a carefully orchestrated plan. Although we had married young – I was 20 and Claude was 25 – each of us was sure that, like our parents, we would be married forever, and the two of us shared a sober determination to make an even better life for our children than the lives we had lived so far.

Feeling my eyes on him, Claude turned. ‘I love you,’ I said, blowing him a kiss. He smiled as we turned and pulled into the drive. Climbing out of the car, I gathered the diaper bag and small suitcase. Claude opened the door behind me, unhooked the safety latch and lifted Will in his infant carrier from the back seat. I followed the two of them as they passed through the gate of the white picket fence. The stone path led us past the rose garden. In early December, the bushes were mostly a tumble of bare branches, but the manicured lawn of the back yard was still a deep green. As we approached the back door of our little Cape Cod, Claude suddenly stopped and turned. Tipping Will’s infant seat slightly forward, he said, solemnly but with a sparkle in his eye, ‘Someday son, this will all be yours.’

The two of us had grinned at each other, drunk in our shared love for our son. Neither of us knew then, how far from reality our shared dreams were.

Uncharted Waters

Will had already crawled halfway up the steps when he turned, plopping his diapered bottom on the stair behind him, and giggled at me. Standing two steps below him, I smiled and clapped my hands encouragingly. I was trying to hide my concern, not wanting to scare him, half-wondering if I should whisk him up and away from danger, but feeling too excited to interrupt his climb. I couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when he finally reached the top.

Will turned back to the task, and I slowly followed. As soon as he reached the top step, he scooted his chubby legs around until he was in a sitting position and, beaming at me, began clapping his hands. His delight in this new perspective, looking down on me, was worth every breathless moment I had experienced during his climb. I grinned and clapped too, reaching over to kiss his cheek.

‘Good job, Will! You did it,’ I said; I couldn’t have been more proud than if he had just scaled Mount Everest. ‘You must be so proud of yourself,’ I said, reaching down to pick him up and carry him back down the stairs.

Two hours later, my friend Ann and I were sitting in her living room, which was comfortably cluttered with toys, unfolded laundry and half-drunk cups of coffee. Will and Ann’s daughter Jillian were crawling around the gated, child-proofed space, mostly oblivious to each other. I admired Ann. She was the kind of woman I secretly wanted to be. Smart, sexy and sure of herself in a way that I wasn’t, she was finishing her graduate degree in child psychology. She was unapologetically in love with Mark, her second husband, a talented and successful graphic artist, and the father of Jillian.

Ann seemed to know everything when it came to the health and safety of her child. I was sure she had memorized every dot and mole on Jillian’s body while I, on the other hand, hadn’t even remembered to count Will’s fingers and toes in the moments after his birth. Ann seemed unconcerned about what other people might think about the way her house or life looked; as long as Jillian was happy, everything was okay. I was pretty sure my priorities weren’t so noble or clear. I knew I loved Will as much as Ann loved Jillian, but I still considered the care and running of my home one of my primary responsibilities. It really mattered to me, the way things looked.

Every morning, after Claude left for work and Will went down for his morning nap, I scurried around, emptying and loading the dishwasher, dusting, vacuuming, making the beds and straightening each room. I had a list of daily, weekly and monthly household tasks taped to the refrigerator door, as well as a frequently updated grocery list, organized according to the supermarket aisles. I prided myself on my efficiency and organization, and loved it when Claude raved to friends and family about how quickly I had bounced back after Will’s birth. Everything I did was done with one eye open to the way it would appear to someone else.