smoked weed. We talked about how our lives are half over now — if we’re lucky — so our goal is to have more fun and to feel more present in the now, in the here.
We talked about you, because everyone always wants to talk about you, and I always talk about you anyway because how can I not? You’re so woven into my life in a way that I’m not always sure I understand but also in a way that strangely makes sense.
And I wished you were here. Because we’re at a rented cottage on Canada Day and we ate ribs for dinner and homemade biscuits and beets and all that made me think of you and how you love to eat and would enjoy it — like, really enjoy it — and you’d say something quirky and funny because that’s how you do, and I would look at you and be melty, because that’s how I do.
I thought of Birdie’s face and how it lights up around you. How she’s always the kid with the single mom when we’re doing things with my friends with kids. The other kids have siblings and two parents and she whispers wishes to me sometimes while she’s falling asleep, things like “Mom, sometimes it would be nice to have a brother or sister to play with. But that’s okay, I understand.”
And I lie there very still beside her, because when I had her I wasn’t sure I had “the feeling,” you know? The right feeling I thought I should have about being a parent. But being her mom turned out to be the one truly good thing in my life. The one easy thing. And now that I’m approaching forty, “the feeling” is so strong in me I can’t think of anything else sometimes. How my body seems to want another baby. Yours.
I would do it in a heartbeat now, no question, but time is running out, and you can only be occasional to us. You are not here lighting sparklers with her, or singing duets with me as I play guitar around the fire. You aren’t worried that time is running out. You’re trying to make sense of your own life. You’re trying to be good and true to you. Your free spirit is what I love about you, even though it’s the thing that keeps you from me.
And I crawled into bed now and I’m still wearing your Adidas jacket and it still smells like you somehow and it’s like I’m flooded, but not with anxiety or sadness at what you will and won’t be.
No, I’m flooded with good clear thoughts of all the things you already are.
xo,
mp
July 1, 2014
BIRDIE
Spring 2007. I’m eight months pregnant and I’m a giant, swollen mass. The doctor has put me on bedrest because my blood pressure is constantly through the roof. My feet have gone from a size seven to a size nine. For the last month, each night before bed, The Husband has wrapped my forearms in ice. He does it with such care and a lot of little jokes. I feel lucky to have a husband who wants a baby this much. The ice sort of helps with the agonizing pain, but nothing helps these ankles. I can’t even see them anymore.
Basically, the last month of being pregnant totally sucks. When I’m thirty-seven weeks pregnant, The Husband drives me to the doctor for an ultrasound. The high blood pressure and swollen limbs have the doctor concerned I might have pre-eclampsia. She does an ultrasound and declares there to be very little amniotic fluid. She looks at us and asks, “You have any plans today? How do you feel about just having this baby?” and I am so relieved. Yes, please, take this baby out of me, please.
I’m induced. Thirty-five unbearable hours later, the next night, after so much pushing and no success, they wheel me into the operating room and do a C-section. The Husband has been at my side every step of the way, and neither of us has slept for what is nearing forty hours. I can barely see Birdie when he brings her to me. My eyes are crossing and I see two, three babies, all blurry.
“Is she okay?” I ask and he says, “She’s perfect.”
“Oh, good,” I say, and pass out.
While I’m passed out, they finish up the operation. The Husband takes Birdie out into the hall where his mother, my family, and my best friend all meet her. Seven people meet my baby before I do. They all see her face clearly and touch her. I wake up an hour later to a nurse pushing the baby onto my breast, so I still can’t really see her face. And I’m so full of drugs I can’t make out anything that’s happening, least of all that I am now a mother.
After five days in the hospital, we head home. My mother comes to stay with us at first, to help out. She argues with The Husband constantly. Every breath the baby takes is something for them to disagree on; they both have an opinion on everything, a low-level battle in the background of this new life. I’m too exhausted to have my own opinions. Not that anyone’s asking me.
I feel completely dissociated. Like if anyone were to look at me, they’d know something was wrong. I feel like an alien. I’m sad, exhausted, and freaked out. I know nothing about babies. And this one is now killing me twelve times a day when she’s meant to be fed by my body. There doesn’t seem to be enough milk to satisfy her, so she’s ravenous, and tearing chunks of flesh off my nipples. It’s the most natural thing for a woman to do, we’re told, but it’s awful. It’s the most physically painful thing I’ve ever experienced. I would rather have the thirty-five-hour labour again, or have my appendix burst again, or break my leg in two places again — anything, anything, would be less terrible than this.
The Husband and my mom fight all the time, but on this they agree: stop breastfeeding. But I feel like a failure of a woman. The Husband is understanding and kind about it. He says, “You couldn’t have the baby naturally either, remember? So, don’t worry about it.” And he’s right. The baby isn’t growing; after three weeks she is still under her birth weight. So I give up. We put her on formula, and she becomes a plump, relatively happy baby.
The thing with maternity leave is, I’m alone. Just me and Birdie, a baby that never sleeps during the day. I pace through the house like a stranger, looking at everyday objects and forgetting the meaning of them. Wine glasses. Books. What are those for? I can’t even imagine reading one book, why do I have so many? One day I open the bathroom cupboard and see a whole tray of eyeshadow I can’t imagine ever putting on again. And I have so many big, shiny earrings. Where on earth would I wear such things?
Eyeshadow and earrings seem like relics of a life I will never have again. Instead, life now is just a series of endless days and nights with nothing but her crying and cooing and the vast empty sound of the vast empty house. There’s no one to talk to, nothing to discuss. Each morning when The Husband leaves at eight, my heart sinks. I watch him drive away until I can’t see him anymore, and everything collapses.
I’m looking forward to July though. He’s a teacher so he’ll be off for the summer and home to spend time with the baby. Home to help me get some rest, some bearings. And since this is the thing he wanted more than anything in the world, I imagine how excited he must be for the last day of work so he can be home to care for her.
But instead, he goes on a trip. As soon as the school year is finished, he goes to Washington, DC, with a bunch of co-workers. He says he has to, but I can’t understand it — why would there be a mandatory work trip during the summer? Why would he go on a trip when it’s his very first opportunity to be home with his newborn daughter and his wife? We have a huge fight about it. And then it comes up again, and again and again. For years and years, it just keeps coming up during arguments about other things, because I can’t get over it, ever. I just can’t.
When he comes back from the trip, there’s finally some relief and I’m grateful
