Waking open

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Something new is happening to me. It feels somewhere between waking up and breaking open. Something between being newborn and fresh in the morning, and feeling a warmth spilling out of a cracked open casing.  It is a pleasant, tingly sensation that I can feel everywhere, like a dam is continuously and gently bursting, sending rivulets around my core and limbs. It’s not entirely comfortable though, since with it comes the light of truth. I think I have been sleep walking through these last two years as a parent and have missed irreplaceable treasures. Not the sleep walking of the new parent rocking their infant incessantly, nor the existential trip of new identities and lifestyles. Those have been true too of course. It’s something deeper, like I wasn't entirely there. My heart breaks to think of it, of what I have missed. I know I was partially there, and that it’s not 100% true. But A has said more than once that she has noticed a subtle energetic absence from me, a holding back, especially the first year of Ben's life. It is partially based in the embarrassing admittance of resenting her physical relationship with Ben, the pregnancy, everything I couldn't have or do. It is also sadly based on occasionally resenting having a child and the immense giving of self needed to which A dutifully engaged immediately and without question. It's like I was a robot, changing diapers, going through the motions. I may just be having a mood these days, being 29 weeks pregnant, and be seeing things askew. But I know in my gut that it’s partially true because I know how different it feels in my body now to love Ben, and to love A as a co-parent.

So what happened? I can’t say for sure. But A and Ben went on a big trip for over a week without me and I had a lot of space to reflect and sleep in. Although I also had fun while they were away, when they left I wept miserably and lived to see Ben’s face each day on Skype. I made his year two baby album and edited together the home videos of his life up until now. Listening to his baby gurgles each day that week, something about the innocence, his beauty, they wormed their way through some barrier. I was also highly attuned to A’s daily traumatic sleep stories of our not-so-great-wee-traveler. I also received a very intense osteopathic treatment (which deserves its whole own post, apparently I am an osteopathic anomaly, darn red heads!) which focused in part on some energetic damage in my rib cage and back around my heart. When they got home, I held and held Ben. I looked him in the eyes. I feel like we met again, silently agreed on something. Like I made a hushed promise even I couldn't hear to be fully present from now on to his humanity, to his astounding self.

I think every parent mourns the passing of time, even when times are tough. Pictures and videos help, and are precious. Thank you technology. But we can never get our babies back, their firsts, the moments slipping by unnoticed amidst the meal planning and sleep training (yet another bout of which I managed post-trip, but with a gentleness, ease and sense of faith unlike any I've felt before). The best we can do is to be as fully present as possible in each moment, to really pay attention to our kids. Especially in the face of all that threatens to hurt them, our family, or our time together.

I am waking up, and breaking open. I am waking open, and the bitter sweetness that threatens to overwhelm me is also my salvation as Ben’s and this next baby boy’s loving Maman. 

E

breaking waters

All around us, our friends’ waters are breaking and babies’ are birthing. A and I are both often in tears, moved by the stories’ complexity and simplicity, violence and beauty, and our friends’ vulnerability and strength. A’s likely contagious hormones are a good excuse for the loopy, revved up instability we feel. I think we’re both in this trip so deep that hearing about the finishing line is overwhelming to our normally balanced emotional states. For so many years our whole focus was achieving that double line on the pee stick, all parenting dreams aimed at that one small (read “giant”) detail. Ever since we’ve seen those impossibly clear lines, the scope keeps changing. We were so happy to get through the trepidation of the dangerous FIRST TRIMESTER. Then we were over the moon to get into the viable child-could-live-albeit-plugged-into-machines zone. We’re officially in the third trimester now as of Tuesday, and A is kept awake at night by the many physicalities but almost more so by thoughts of birth. She dreads it, and yet craves it. I’m not so sure where I stand. I am looking forward to meeting our small charge, and yet am thinking wistfully about those things that so far have kept me sane: quiet, space, time alone. And the freedom to be spontaneous. I want to go to the Bedouin Soundclash show tonight, but I know there is no hope of A joining me. I called to ask what time the actual band came on. 11pm!!?? The fellow on the phone very sweetly said, “You’ll be happy to know it’s not a late show. You should be out of there by 1pm”. Really? Thank you. Thank you for highlighting our shifting perception of reality, the muddied sea of identity confusion in which we swim. Our lives these days are like waves crashing against a rocky shore, moments of quiet tension and expectation (and sometimes peace) building to other moments of strong emotion: pain, shock, joy. I can only imagine what will happen when it’s our turn, when A’s living waters break all over our life and things get really interesting!

E