Dia de la Madre

It's indescribable. But I'll try writing this post, anyhow...

For a long time now, my family has gathered together for a Mother's Day brunch. It was really to honour our mother. But for many years, it was a gathering I would dread. I hated going. After losing one baby, then trying trying trying for a number of years for another, then losing a second baby six years after the first baby...

Well, I'm sure you can imagine. It was a bit painful to be out for brunch where I was literally surrounded by mothers being celebrated and motherhood, the focus of the day. Everywhere I looked there were mothers and their little children, flowers and laughter and smiles and, best of all, homemade cards from their little ones.

I bit my lip, my tongue, tried to swallow my envy down with the pancakes and syrup, but it would just get stuck in my throat and I'd go home, curl up in bed and cry myself asleep into my pillow.

Eventually, I had to tell my parents I wouldn't be attending the family Mother's Day brunch. I just couldn't do it. I made a point of going separately to my mom's and giving her a card and gift that morning or the day before. They both understood my decision.

Last year was the first time in many years I attended the brunch. I was so round and ready to burst, literally as I would give birth three days following Mother's Day. I felt safe celebrating it a little early.

But today. Today was my very first official Mother's Day as a mommy finally. There was snow on the ground this morning. This, after record temperatures in April reaching 25 degree, summer-like weather.  On the drive to meet my family, the sky was full of fluffy, white clouds. And I thought that is just what my heart feels like today: bright, white, fluffy, weightless, glorious, breathtaking. Like a cloud without rain. Like a cloud whose precipitation is pure and white and falls slowly and gently and quietly on a May morning such as this.

How do I properly put it into words just how I feel this day? Nursing him this morning, I made sure the tears that flowed down my cheeks didn't hit the soft curls of his hair. Tears of relief. Of pure ecstasy. Of longed for Joy. Tears for the babies I'd lost. Tears for the baby I found. The baby I have now. Smiles and tears.

I overhear people bemoaning parenthood all the time. Rolling their eyes in collusion over the burden it sometimes is, and according to some, often is, as though it is more often than not. And even as a parent now, I remain in mute astonishment towards this attitude. I wonder if I will ever get to a stage where I take this gift for granted? This amazing gift bestowed and entrusted to me. To parent the child I have. Would I, too, be one of these nodding, winking people had I not endured such a battle to have my child? Would I, even if I'd had the struggle I've had, if my baby had been colicky, not so easy, not so perfect as he's been? I admit I have a hard time imagining me ever taking this gift for granted after all the years of wanting it for so long and dreaming of it and hoping for it and having those hopes dashed time and time again.
People say, "you must be tired." "You look exhausted." And I know I do. I am tired somedays. But it's a happy tired. It's a "I'm so goddamn lucky" tired. I wouldn't trade it for all the sleep in the world. People say, "it must be hard on your own." But I know, having lived both sides now: I would rather be alone with this gift of a child, than be with somebody without this gift. If I only had those two options, I know which one I would choose. Have chosen.

I am so lucky lucky lucky. I know so many women who have struggled with infertility. Who still do. Who have had one or more IVFs in their struggle and whose IVF surgeries failed in some way. The fact that mine worked on my first attempt, resulting in the birth of my beautiful Sonshine, is unfathomable to me after all the years of failed attempts and despair, loss of hope.

This day. To celebrate this day, finally! I cannot describe it. But I will say, it feels like heaven. And I am over the moon this day.

Today, before leaving for brunch. I caught a gift outside my front window: a very pregnant robin perched on the wooden stoop in the snow. A sign, perhaps. A message...

Happy, Happy Mother's Day.

Nesting

She came back to her nest today. Her mate was with her. (I envied her that.) I was heading out the side door on my way to prenatal class and they both flew over my head to the maple tree until I was gone. My due date is exactly one month away. Tears fill my eyes to see her finally. Last spring, she had five little robins. They all lived. I’d climbed a ladder to take a peek and my shadow made their little heads pop up and their beaks open, expecting food.

It was July when she returned to nest a second time. She hasn’t done that every year, but last year she did. She laid only two eggs then. One I’d found by the beginning of August on the stones, broken into bits in front of the door. The other remained in the nest, blue and perfect, though clearly not alive since she’d abandoned the nest altogether. I took the remaining egg indoors. This was around the time I began injecting my belly with infertility drugs. That robin egg became my little talisman. It sits on an antique hutch in another abandoned nest I’d found on the driveway. Neither of her two eggs survived, but when I look back now, what happened proved so ominous. In Celtic mythology, birds act as messengers. One egg had broken and the other had remained whole. This happened the month before I conceived twins through IVF. By the 12th week ultrasound, I would lose one baby. One baby would remain intact. So I have a thing about this robin. I feel a strange bond with her. It’s so good to see her back nesting again while I prepare my own. We are in synch.

I love that her nest sits on the beam outside the room that you and I will share; the room where I intend to birth you. When she’s nested the last four years in this same spot above my side door, she flies over my head each morning I leave my old farmhouse. She’s been kind enough never to shit on my head while doing this. It’s a brief flit to the maple tree and then back to the nest once I’m in my car. Eventually, by the end of each spring, she gets used to me and flies a shorter distance to the post sometimes, secure in the knowledge that I will leave her and her eggs alone. I gain her trust gradually.

The Weepies sing as I write this. I am thinking about the peak night of the Perseids last August. All those falling stars as I sent prayers up to the heavens for you. My body is wide to hold all the promise of blue-velvet dark and stars. You are that promise. In a month, perhaps less, but no more than 6 weeks from now, I will finally be holding you in my arms. My soul will weep and sing at the sight of you being pulled from between my legs. My heart will burst like fireworks all over the bloodied sheets beside this window below her nest. You will take your first breath and take away mine. The pulse of the cord will slow as your heart beats on its own and mine skips. I will be gazing into your eyes in disbelief, awe, gratitude, Unconditional Love, as you suck at my own red breast. I swear I’ll try to prevent tears falling from my dark lashes upon your sweet little face, your own dark locks, but I can’t make any promises, kay?

Here’s one promise I will keep: when those little robins break open from their greenish-blue eggs, I will swaddle you and climb two steps on my ladder when you are a month or so old and I’ll hold you up so our shadows will prompt their tiny, feathery heads to pop up and they will each open their mouths to sing you a proper welcome, my baby, to the planet.

For now, Mama Robin and I prepare our nests. We clean the dirt out. We put fresh straw and twigs in. We sing. We begin to hunker down. We watch the sky for falling stars. We count the days. And we await patiently the Joy that flies toward us…

Maternity Photography: Mattitude Photography

Music: Stars, The Weepies

Are You There Horton? It's Me, Nancy.

Kay, I don't know if there is something out there. Some creator being or whatnot. Horton actually wasn't exactly that anyhow for the Whos of Whoville. He was someone who helped them, though; someone who looked out for 'em. I admit I'm more like Nick Cave and don't believe in an interventionist God. I do like to think there is something greater than the sum of all these parts. I can't help when I look to Nature and all its amazing patterns, the universe, its cycles, the cycles of seasons, of day to night, that there might be. The Earth amazes me despite all the shit we've put her through. The cosmos is the greatest show on earth, literally. So maybe there is something out there. Some pattern to it all. To us. To our world. Who knows?

A few weeks ago, I attended Music and Movies in the Park. The night I went, the Jolly Llamas opened with a musical set and the screening that night in the park was the most recent hollywood animated adaptation of Dr. Seuss' 1954 classic, Horton Hears a Who! My friend, Dawn, and her daughter Devin had a chair waiting for me. I'd really only planned to attend other nights showing Bladerunner and Breakfast at Tiffany's, but Horton was more fun than I would have anticipated. It was a beautiful, warm, summer night with just enough of a breeze to keep the mosquitos at bay. So awesome to sit out under the stars and share a movie with all these strangers from one community gathering, carrying babies, blankets, pillows, chairs and flashlights and laughing on the grass.

The last couple of days I've been thinkin' bout Horton. My twin sister and her husband attended this wedding on a hillside in Vermont last month that was heartachingly beautiful in its simplicity. As it was on the East coast, the groom-to-be had described the sensation of all their friends and family trekking from all across the States and Canada out to this wee spot in Vermont as though they were all some great, big "love elephant" bounding towards them. Their wedding site URL was inspired by his remark. My sis has been starting her own side business of customizing exquisitely designed and handcrafted stuffed toys. Thus, as a wedding gift, she created this gorgeous, beaded, handsewn elephant to celebrate their day. I'm a big one for metaphors and I adore this image. It's popped into my head this early morning. As has Horton.

My twin sister, my own womb-mate, is sleeping upstairs and I let her continue to dream as I write this. It is 5:00 am. In 45 minutes, we will get into the car and drive to a clinic in Hamilton and this huge journey I've been anticipating for so long will have officially begun. All my preparation for this moment is coming to fruition, hopefully literally. And I'm thinkin' bout Horton and the Whos of Whoville.

S'cause I feel like all my friends and family members who know the magnitude of what I'm attempting are out there for me this morning. My chance at success feels as vulnerable and fragile and random really as some speck of dust floating in some gigantic, obstacle-laden jungle. There may be danger at every turn. But there they all are, banging their tom-toms. They're tinging tie kettles and pummeling brass pans for me. They're clanging garbage pail tops and old cranberry cans in some kind of frenzy. Each one of 'em is putting lips to a bazooka, tooting their hearts out on oom-pahs and boom-pahs and flutes. They are all making whatever noise they can so some Horton out there might hear 'em. So that what I'm carrying, my own lil' collection o' microcosmic dust specks, these tiny universes unto themselves, will be protected and safe. My womb is flowering, unfolding its petals to catch them so they will be able to survive and live...

I can hear the clamouring din. I feel it pounding inside my breast, echoing my own heartbeat. It's making me cry as I write this in the dark of early dawn. I am so moved by their efforts on my behalf. They are simultaneously my colossal love elephant out there in the world as well as each and every Who in Whoville whom I love.

Small wonder that Loxodonta Africana is my mother's favourite creature. I'm thinkin' bout my mum a lot this morning: how wonderful a mother she's been to all of us; how perfect an example to inspire me at this time. And she's so damn crazy 'bout elephants. I can't help loving them myself this morning. For an animal whose gestational period is in years not months, I can relate. I've been waiting for this moment for years myself and I hope it comes true. And like an elephant, I'll never forget all these voices and hearts resounding out there for me in Hope that it happens. I won't let you forget it, either, if I ever get to tell you this story. This is the first fucking book I'm gonna read you...

But for now, right now, I climb to the top of the Eiffelberg Tower alone. I am Jo-Jo. I no longer want to be afraid of Hope or shy away from joining in this hullabaloo on my behalf. On yours. I no longer wish to be "cautiously optimistic". I want to yell with all my heart and every ounce of my fucking being (which includes you). I realize that my voice, my Hope, is the important li'l bit that's maybe been missing before.

And Horton? Christ, I hope you're listenin...open those big, floppy ears, hey? Please hear me, hear this communal prayer goin' out from the mouths and hearts of all of those who love me. For the one(s) that I am dying to love. I am singing, screaming out to the stars above me:

"YOPP!"
Music: Love Reign O'er Me, The Who