Half a Year

My son turned 6 months old this week. How did that even HAPPEN? As I was nursing him in a local coffee shop I frequent, a pregnant woman walked by the window and I could recall so vividly the feeling of carrying that round belly, the weight of him inside me, suspended in water, the rolling, the hiccuping. The sheer Joy of it. Wasn't it only yesterday that I dreamt about what I get to do now on a daily basis: lift his sweet, smiling self out of a crib each morning? Wasn't it only a month or so ago, I pushed him, wriggling and kicking, out between my limbs? Surely not HALF A YEAR ago?

Turning 6 months old was a milestone for his diet, as well. This is the first week he got to eat actual FOOD (other than boob-milk or formula supplement). I was concerned about how he'd react. For one thing, the day of delivery, when my water broke, the midwife had detected meconium in it. That was the reason I didn't end up having a homebirth. It's a baby's first bowel movement and it can be pretty serious if the baby has swallowed or inhaled it in utero. I was rushed to the hospital as a result. The presence of meconium also meant that, within his first few seconds of life, instead of the doctor thrusting his squirmy, newborn body on top of mine with the cord still intact until it stopped beating so that we could bond immediately, he was severed from me right away and rushed to a sidetable to have his trachea suctioned. Imagine this is your first experience of life outside the womb: you've just begun breathing for the first time, a new experience in itself, and something is forced into your mouth to vacuum out your throat. It can be pretty traumatic on a little person. And having something new/strange thrust into his mouth may not be his favourite thing in the world after such trauma.

So I wondered how he'd react to a) the spoon and b) the rice cereal, itself. He was very brave. Obviously the texture was different for him. But he opened his mouth and continued to test it and digest it. As well, he messed it. All over his mouth, his hands, his bib, even his hair. It was a thrill to watch him figure it all out, this eating stuff. This isn't sucking. This is hmmmm...chewing. Moving around in the mouth. The texture is...creamy, yet somehow slightly lumpy. Substance. Not liquid. Hmmmmm...mmmmmm. Yummmmmm?

In June of 2007, I traveled to Guatemala with Habitat for Humanity (something I've yet to properly devote a blog or two towards and will hope to rectify soon). Our group bookmarked the construction of two homes in San Marcos in the West with a stay in Antigua at the beginning and end of the trip. We found a beautiful (and affordable) breakfast place there (photos of which I took below) and I remember ordering what is known as "mosh" in a cup or bowl. Mosh is, essentially, oatmeal with milk and a little cinnamon. It reminded me of a cereal my mother used to make me when I was a little girl: Cream of Wheat. The rice cereal I fed my son this week had the same consistency.


          And he seems to like it! A victory on the food front and considering his rough start seconds after being born. But he is a baby very open to trying new things and widening his horizons.

My parents and his aunt oooo'd and ahhhhh'd over his talent for gobbling up this Brave New World of real live food. We held a little "half-birthday" party to celebrate him turning half a year. Wow. I can feel the tiremarks burned into the road, here. Where has the Time gone?


          
The other equally lovely part of today was meeting a woman whose blog I've only recently discovered and, even more recently, learned that she's in my locale. She is the talented and hilarious "blogHer", Mimi on the Breach, and, after introducing herself via a comment on my blog (post me initially leaving a comment on her blog), we ran into each other today and got to shake hands offline! What a thrill to put a face to the blog (and such a lovely face, too)! I never believe in happenstance or just plain old coincidence. I think connections are made like this for reasons unknown. All the connections in my life are important to me and I know they contribute to enhancing my life in some way: either through a lesson learned, a desire or need fulfilled, an opportunity for growth or revelation or just plain old fun, a new friend made. Could the day get any better, but then I discover she wrote about me on her much traveled blog, pointing people in my direction? How very generous and lovely! Thanks, Mimi. I very mosh appreciate it! You're bloggy wonderful!


My son is sleeping in his crib as I "pen" this, dreaming no doubt of food, glorious food. Whether in one's mouth or on one's cardigan ;), all in all, a very yummy day!



Music: Food, Glorious Food, Oliver!

Cumulonimbus

As I write this with evening coming on, the fields surrounding my 1.3 acres are blanketed for the first time this Autumn. Snow. Not just any snow. His very first snowfall. I am recounting the day. Sometime after 6:30 a.m., I reach for my camera. I had been lying in bed in the dark watching the picnic table collect soft, large flakes on the back deck as I listen to him talk to himself, his favourite thing in the mornings as he awakens. I guess he figures he will let me sleep while he amuses himself. Perhaps, since he wakes up in semi-darkness, he assumes he is alone somehow. But I like to think he can hear my breathing, a kind of security blanket that warms him enough to coo in perfect contentment and concoct gurgling noises deep in his throat. I turn on the light and approach the crib. He beams up at me. Where did I find this child? How did he find me? An owl, deer and robin look on as I lift him out of his forested bedding and pull back the hanging on the deck door to reveal The White Stuff. He is so young still, one week away from turning 6 months old, I'm not sure what exactly he makes of it all. I imagine his little mind like the inside windings, wheels and tick-tocks of an old grandfather clock, turning and formulating each New and Wondrous Thing he absorbs and locking it away somewhere to pull out again later. Referencing. Storing. The squirrel on his crib bumper eyes my son's hungry mind warily and grasps onto the nut she holds a little more tightly.

This morning we drive into town early. My car needs a 110-point inspection at Crappy Tire. Across the way is Starbucks so I stroll him over under a blue, but cold sky, the morning's snowflakes melted away. We lay siege on one of the smaller, couchy-type chairs. What astounds me as I sit and sip and nurse simultaneously is the myriad of languages I hear. Two women speak Italian three tables over. At least, it's a Latin language that is not French. I assume Italian because of the beautiful hand gestures the women sign to accompany each point they are making as they converse with each other. They don sweats and lycra as though they have just both come from a workout, but still look sophisticated in that oh-so-European way. The gym, perhaps, wasn't enough since they pump their arms up and down and all around as they talk. They evoke a silent film and I feel like a voyeur as I can nearly guess their entire conversation through the movements of their eyes, mouths and hands. Listening to their lilt, I smile and dream about sipping this decaf latte with my babe at my boob in Florence instead; close my eyes to imagine it. Just behind me another couple chats away and I am suddenly thrown Northeast to Prague. As if on cue, cumulonimbus sweep in, blotting out the sun. No, it's not a Harry Potter broom. Cumulonimbus are the types of clouds which carry rain or snow within them. And for the second time this morning, it's snow falling. Not softly, though. It slants and hurtles toward the ground. A gaggle of teenagers from the nearby highschool rush in wearing winter coats over gym shorts and knee-high socks, giggling and squealing as they shake the weather from their goose-bumped limbs.

The woman has turned to fuss over my sonshine. He produces My Favourite Thing (his shy smile). Her name is Jindra, I learn. Pronounced Yin-drah. She spells it out for me. Her husband tries to out-shy my son. I smile. This is what I miss about Toronto when I lived there. All the varied cultures everywhere you'd go. I'm surprised to find a bit of a melting pot here in my old hometown, but happy to discover this area has been growing and stretching, morphing into a somewhat more global creature while I've been living rurally the last decade. I will be leaving the countryside in the spring. The thought makes me happy and sad simultaneously, but that's par for the course where I'm concerned. My body has difficulty differentiating between Joy and Sorrow sometimes. What is the phrase I came across last night? Oh, yes: Excess of Sorrow laughs. Excess of Joy weeps. William Blake. Boy, did he get that right. How many times have I felt the strong urge to quell a giggle at a funeral or weep buckets over something so beautiful, it hurt? I look at my son and ponder his own songs of innocence and experience. Sonshine, The Musical. For now, I have a front row seat and am thoroughly enjoying the show.


          
His Aunt swings by and, over another latte, we discuss what she's working on these days and my own future goals. As I nurse him, he falls asleep in a sunlit halo. Today I have decided to write more often. As often as I can. And add some photos, some colour, to the stories I'm sharing. I figure practice will make perfect. Someday. And I need all the practice I can get. With this wee bundle of mine filling the bulk of my arms and my days, I aim to write at least once a week, if not every day. It's a start. A tiny goal. A first step. I wonder when he will take his. Each day, I place him on his tummy and he strains to crawl. He has learned to turn himself over or move himself around in a circle. Forward motion he has yet to master (something I am only beginning to master myself since leaving my common-law marriage and the rut, the stasis of it). We learn to move forward together, my son and I.



The sun shines again as we leave my parents' place, a brief visit once the car is fixed. Clouds in the distance promise that we head home into yet another snowfall. The expanse of rural sky gives the added benefit of watching weather approach, sometimes tentatively. At other times, menacingly. Each time fascinates. Something I will miss. I throw another log in my woodstove to build the fire up and take a photograph of the front yard turning white at dusk. The tiny squares of the screen door produce the effect of a photo taken a century ago. In a farmhouse as old as this, it suits the mood perfectly. Pathetic fallacy. His little mouth turns toward my heart as we settle for the night with the ghosts in, what is now, a ghostlike landscape.


Music: Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell

Mammaries and Machismo

So, tonight marks my late-night viewing of the final episode of six seasons' worth of David Chase's The Sopranos. For the last couple of months, I've been diligently plodding my way through the series in the dark, wee hours of morning, either with my son attached to my breast or once he is placed in his crib, as some kind of antidote to the insomnia of new parenthood I've been experiencing.

It's been a surreal trip, let me tell you. And don't think for one second I haven't tried to analyze the possible reasons for such blatant dichotomy as the act of nursing him to the background soundtrack of such heavy content. In the months prior to The Sopranos, honestly almost from the moment I was left to my own devices as a new, single mum in my farmhouse out here, I climbed a burning ladder through four seasons of Denis Leary's Rescue Me. And I think I finally get the gist of why, suddenly, I felt the need to digest these two macho-focused series, for the most part, while my babe simultaneously digests the milk from my breasts.

They are not that dissimilar in content: strong yet dysfunctional, Catholic, philandering, central male characters trying to hold their families together any way they can. Both shows exhibit, yes, a good dose of violent content, of sexual content. But here's what I've come up with as one possible reason for choosing to view these two particular series while grappling and juggling with new mummyhood and specifically, single mummyhood: it's the father. Not just the father my son is missing as a child of an anonymous donor, but I have to admit I think, subconsciously, it's a mixture of the presence and influence of my own father in my life combined with the lack of any kind of father in his.

I was raised Irish Catholic. And not just any ordinary Irish Catholicism. My parents were both born in Ireland and emigrated to Canada in the 1950s. This meant that my Catholic family life was slightly different from the Catholic family life my classmates were experiencing. My parents raised our family like it was 1950s Dublin, only it happened to be 1970s Canada. Coming from a country whose population was 98% Catholic, they had a difficult time adjusting to the fact that not all their offspring's friends (and later, their boyfriends/girlfriends and, much later, their husbands/wives) did not follow this faith. For a good part of my childhood, I believed all my Canadian Catholic peers knelt to pray the rosary together of a Friday night. I didn't realize my family was a tad unique in that way. In my early 20s, I broke free of following this faith, wielding my own machete through what I felt was its repressive, outdated and patriarchal forest. I've carved my own path since and am more than happy to remain spiritual without being religious in any way.

But I can relate to Tommy Gavin so very easily. In fact, I developed a terrible crush, not just on Tommy himself, but on Denis Leary for creating the character and the whole damn series. For embodying Tommy so wholly and succintly. I admit I'm still kinda kooky about him. Weird. (Or not.) And, no surprise, I fell completely head over heels for both Tony Soprano and James Gandolfini in the same vein. For David Chase, a little, too. As a trained actor and, also, as a wanna-be-published writer, I appreciate both the fine-tuned composition of each series and the incredible performances which make that wickedly woven writing come alive on screen. Just my weakness for both these characters (and the men who portray them) seems a little perplexing. As a feminist, I'm not sure why I'd be attracted to men so volatile and dominant. I guess Dr. Jennifer Melfi (portrayed to perfection by Lorraine Bracco) would talk to me about an electra complex, maybe. Double weird. But I think it's more the vulnerability they exhibit amidst all the machismo. Their own confusions and ponderings. The self-doubt amidst all the swearing and sweat and sex. I'm sorry, but it's a turn-on.

Last weekend, ironically (or not), as I was rocking my son to sleep in a local pub after a friend's concert performance, I was asked out on a date by a firefighting captain, though I remain unready to go near that kind of er...flame right now (Denis Leary fantasies notwithstanding). As lonely as I've been, it was strange. I thought I'd jump at the chance for a date. Especially being asked out while holding my baby in my arms. That man had balls to even approach me and give me his number. Just I realized very quickly, I don't wish to focus on anyone other than the ONE man in my life right now: my wee, little laddie. As much as I do intend to date again, I realized I just ain't ready right now. It's way too early to split focus. My sweet son is growing and changing daily, each and every SECOND, and I feel like this precious time is passing me by far too quickly already! I peek in on him as I write this and even as he sleeps on his side, his little legs are in running position. "O madonn," as Tony would put it. Literally, I call out to that other Mystic Mama. Madonna mine! Slow my son down. Even in his sleep!

I guess I can kind of see the attraction I've been having: both Tony Soprano and Tommy Gavin come from deep-rooted, Catholic backgrounds that carry their own heavy dosage of guilt, sin, and inner moral struggles. I can definitely relate to these characters. The term familiar itself: root familiaris, meaning of a household. Family. I get it. Boy, do I get it. I get their internal moral struggles. I get their guilt, their desire to do better. To do the right thing in the face of personal weaknesses and failures. I get how much family means to each of these guys. And the lengths they will go to in order to protect those very families. To try to somehow remain their 'glue', in a way.

These guys are not without their own myriad hypocrisies. Yet despite their many hangups and the errors of their ways, they each endeavour to become a better man, a better person within the chaotic content of their lives and the dangers of their daily work, what consumes them in various ways.

What the hell has any of this got to do with breastfeeding, you may ask. Hell if I know. Believe me, I am aware that all the current literature says breastfeeding is a beautiful way to bond with one's offspring. And it definitely is this. Once it finally works. I think 99% of the women I personally know had difficulty with it from the start. Not the desire to try it. But the mechanics of it. I know many women, myself included, for whom it didn't come so easy. Trials towards achieving it included finger feeding with a tube, syringe feeding via tubes, tubes taped to the nipple, endless breastpumping: weeks on end of the backbreaking, frustrating, neck-crippling, hormone-heightening, emotional rollercoaster ride of this singularly beautiful motherly act.

And I know I was supposed to focus only on my son during all of that. But I was struggling. Nothing about it was smooth. When I switched to "boob only" after finally leaving the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, my son began to lose weight. My supply had been exemplary in the hospital. But it had been the pump stimulating that supply and my little boy's even littler mouth just wasn't sucking efficiently on its own to keep that supply up. Eventually I was prescribed dom peridone and advised to, literally, "drink a Guinness a day". Twist my rubber fucking arm at that point (pardon my French - I've a sailormouth at times - another thing I have to watch around my son. I'm quickly trying to master the words fudge and sugar). I don't even drink beer, but the entire process drove me to drink. Every woman I spoke with about my titty trials and tribulations told me it had taken them somewhere between five and eight weeks before everything just seemed to "click" into place and the "natural" aspect of breastfeeding manifests. Who can blame any woman for giving up or giving in to easier roads? I wouldn't blame a soul.

The truth is, a good chunk of my struggles with nursing had me solely focused on my son. It was toward the end of the day when I would feel the need for a bit of distraction from my own emotional and physical distraction over All Things Boob.

It's ironic because I don't like television all that much. I don't believe it holds any real benefit and I don't own a television. Okay, I own one. But it's on the top shelf in the garage. I stopped watching it two months before finally leaving my common-law marriage: three years ago next month. I just never hooked it up again once my ex moved out. It's not the first time in my life I've gone without the boob tube (pardon the pun): I did it all through university. All um. Seven years. Ahem. It's a life choice. Recently, when I was staying with my parents during the painting upheaval to my home, I would flip through channels and realize I'm not really missing much. That the bulk of what is being offered out there remains crap, in my humble opinion. But renting a well-written and superbly acted series, witnessing it via my laptop in the dark of night, without the annoyance of commercial advertising or the delay of the gratification of "what happens next" has felt, admittedly, pretty awesome. At its most basic level, it was pure escapism on my part. Distraction from my own struggles by witnessing the struggles of these other characters, other families.

Not long ago, I was having a discussion about television with one of my brothers. He enlightened me as to why television can be so addictive for people. It's movement. Plain and simple. Thousands of years ago, when our species was evolving, if we looked across a vast plain as hunters and gatherers, our eyes would be caught by any movement. It was inherent to our survival that we would then focus on this movement and follow it. It could be our next meal. It could be what wanted to make a meal out of us. We didn't take our eyes off of it. This is one damn, OLD inherent survival-of-the-fittest condition. We are drawn to what moves. It's ancient within us. And television totally exploits this innate, entirely natural inherent mode within us. Wow. The bastards. I blame Louis Le Prince. But then, I also applaud his ingenuity, really. He sure did catch on to something.

Last May I heard a CBC report on how much damage television can do to a brain still under development. I think it was possibly an episode of Ideas on Radio 1. I recall it announcing that an infant's brain is not yet developed enough to properly process what it may be witnessing on a television screen. And the damage can mean that as "little" as 10 minutes of television a day to a child under one year old has been proven to have horrendous ramifications much later in that child's development and can result in ADHD and the like in or around age six or seven years.

Consequently I've been careful, of course, considering the content of each series and what I believe myself to be the harm too much television can do for young eyes and young minds, to only watch each episode that I've rented with headphones plugged in and my son's sweet, innocent face turned towards my bosom away from the screen. He sees nothing. He hears nothing. He knows nothing. He's Seargent Schulz 'ovah heah', as Tony might put it.

But back to the boobs: watching both of these series has been an obvious self-indulgence during a time I am giving, giving, giving on a 24-7 basis. Don't get me wrong. This is quite as it should be. (I'm not complaining, believe me, after all those years of infertility and wanting, wanting, wanting and not being given, not being given, not being given and the taking, taking, taking of three other pregnancies.) The giving and sacrificing of self is, what I truly believe anyhow, to be the honest role of a good, devoted parent.

There is a part of me that wonders whether my choice in visual content during mammary meals is one simple way to absorb all that is good about these two fathers, Tony and Tommy, into my own bloodstream somehow. That amidst all the chaos of their own family lives and their own many, varied human weaknesses, mishaps and mistakes, the qualities that are actually admirable in these characters are somehow being absorbed by me and ingested, along with my breastmilk, into my son. Maybe I'm trying, as the single mum I am, to inherit some good, strong machismo. Um. The healthy kind. So that I can try to carry qualities of both parental figures in one body for now and help steer my son toward being a good man later.

I make a silent prayer that my son will feel elation in his life. Not necessarily drug-induced obviously, but I do want him to experience the freedom, euphoria and revelation Tony undergoes after a night on peyote, shouting to the sunrise, "I get it. I get it." His voice echoing over the desert of a Nevada landscape. Looking at my son sleeping quietly in his crib, I can definitely now see the purpose of my own life quite clearly. I finally "get it" myself. And I want him to be as driven by determination, belief and faith (though not necessarily Catholic, I'll admit) as Tommy is when he refuses to accept that little girl is given up for dead by the EMS officers, by his firefighting peers, by even her own mother and he relentlessly resuscitates her back to life, lighting a forbidden cigarette as reward.

Both these series made me weep openly. They hit me to the core. They were sometimes passionate and poignant and touched many a nerve. Not to mention their own close associations with and references to 9/11, the stark tragedy of which arouses enough of its own fervour for any North American, especially those of us unused to the kind of suffering and war to which other parts of the planet are daily exposed. I'm not sure at which point the opening credits of The Sopranos removed the image of the two towers in the sideview mirror of Tony's car, though I noticed it had been cut. Perhaps out of respect to those for whom that image was painful. The importance of 9/11 to Rescue Me should be obvious - even to the extent that its final episode was purportedly planned to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the event itself in 2011 as a further commemoration to the lives of the firefighters lost in that tragedy, as well as all the other lives taken.

Maybe I want to inject my son with these better qualities in Tony Soprano and Tommy Gavin: to become a man who understands the importance of family. Who cares deeply about that. To be a man unafraid to question himself, to seek help, to try to learn self-control, discipline. To go against the grain sometimes. To not interpret backing down or away as weakness. To pick your battles. To learn compromise. Respect of others. To harness guilt so that it is only the healthy kind - an emotion that guides one's moral centre to do better in life and make the right choices - but to balance that with not allowing it to consume towards self-destruction. To understand that Life ain't easy and to deal with its hardships in the best way humanly possible. To be a hero when it's called for. And to never be afraid, as a man, to break down and weep, when Life calls for it, whether out of Joy or Sorrow. And achieve all this against some pretty, damn, fine soundtrack.

On that note, here's one for the road. The journey continues...

Music: C'mon C'mon, Von Bondies

Eye of the Storm

A couple of years ago, in an autumnal yoga class, my instructor explained to everyone the concept of "Vata". Vata can describe a season or a personality. When used to describe the natural world, it refers to a time of year when Nature is chaotic: windy, helter-skelter days; highs and sudden lows; rain and sunshine, all at once. She said often when Mother Nature is exhibiting herself in this manner, She can affect each of our daily lives in much the same way and my instructor stressed the importance of finding something steady upon which to focus amidst such chaos and upheaval.

Lately, my life has felt topsy-turvy. My home is in renovation bedlam and my heart's flying around in the sky like a kite, flip-flopping up and down and all around, straining against the hand that keeps hold of its string, envious of the stars and desirous of flight. Today was a particularly blustery day. Even Pooh would have agreed. The temperature dipped to 8 degrees and tomorrow will reach a high of 17. The full moon last night doesn't help to ease the turbulence any. But my Sea of Tranquility was bundled in his teddy-bear bunting bag, beaming up at me. His eyes, like his name, reflect the stillness of water, and its great depth.

My baby boy is a Zen Master. He only cries if he's hungry or if he's a bit gassy. He won't even cry if he's pooped his pants! Instead, he simply sits there smiling, relieved that he's relieved himself. Everywhere we go, everyone remarks on how stoic he is, how calm, how content. I am amazed at my own luck. In his brown hooded fleece, he resembles all the more a wee buddhist monk. I realize how blessed this makes me, especially as a single parent. How would I have handled a colichy baby, I wonder? I feel for the mothers of such babes out there in the world. Especially during the time of Vata.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not startled easily. Not anymore. I've learned to breathe through stress, to steer my way through whitewater waves of pandemonium without capsizing. Nothing really phases me at this stage of my life. I know I wanted to be a younger mother. Heaven knows I tried and tried and tried. Whatever I lack in energy as a mother over 40, I know I make up for in vast, neverending fields of patience. Maybe he gets his serenity from me, though I definitely had a Vata personality when I was younger. The years have helped me find some balance. And, literally, yoga has helped me find it. Right now feels like the best time in my life to be a new mum.

I am focusing these days on getting into shape. I feel like I owe it to him as an older mum. To be around for as long as I can and to be as young as I can be for him. He will be five months old already next week. I am agog at how quickly the time has passed since he passed through me: the journey of pregnancy, his birth. There is no slowing Time. And there is no controlling Vata. We just have to weather this weather. When I hold him, I am suddenly thrown into the eye of the storm. Life swirls in a funnel around me. I am Dorothy flying through the air, watching cows and furniture sweep by us. But I am still. His breathing slows mine. His eyes arrest me. His shy smile soothes. He is my Toto when the world feels strange. Let this house of chaos fall on some other striped-stockinged lass! He and I will survive whatever Life throws at us. (And there are plenty of cows near at hand!)

As I write this, he sleeps peacefully in his crib. I am listening to Karen O and the Kids sing Worried Shoes before I head to bed. It's a song by which, lately, I sing him to sleep. The cinematic version of Where the Wild Things Are comes out in 9 days and this song is on its soundtrack. It was written by a musician named Daniel Johnston, battling his own personal version of Vata in his life: bipolar disorder.

As calm, cool and collected as my son is, I know he will be a wild thing. He has a wildness in him, but it's not a part of his demeanour. Just his soul. There is something about him that will remain uncaptured by anyone. Even me. Kind of like how a mountain range looks different in a photograph. I love this song. Long ago, I used to be a worrywart. I think I worried my way through my teens and twenties. But even as my heart flutters and dips in this riotous wind and I turn to absorb the current disarray of my home's recent facelift, I sigh. I take off my worried shoes and stretch my toes, put up my legs.

It feels divine.

I took my lucky break and I broke it in two.
Put on my worried shoes.
My worried shoes.
Took me so many miles and they never wore out.
My worried shoes.
My worried shoes.
ooooooo.
My worried shoes.

I made a mistake that I never forgot.
Tied knots in the laces of my worried shoes.
Every step that I take is another mistake.
I march further and further away in my worried shoes.
ooooooo. ooooooo.
My worried shoes.

My shoes took me down the crooked path.
Away from all welcome mats.
My worried shoes.
I looked all around and saw the sun shining down.
Took off my worried shoes.
My worried shoes.
ooooooo. ooooooo. ooooooo.
My worried shoes.

Music: Worried Shoes, Daniel Johnston

Taking Flight

Tuesday night I drive from my parents through the winding, rural roads. Back home. And it seems like every bird that ever flew an Ontario sky is heading out during that drive. It was coming on eight o'clock and the sun was beginning to set. Made me weep openly to see them all. He was asleep in the car seat in back. Just turned four months old last Sunday. The drive makes me recall the night my twin sister drove us home from the hospital after the week that seemed like a year in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Home. Migration always makes me wonder: are they going home or leaving home? I like to think that the birds I'm watching take flight are leaving home. That this part of Southwestern Ontario is where they call Home. I take comfort in the knowledge that they'll come back.

I love the way Canadian Geese line up in their own personal arrow formations, their wings in wondrous, dark contrast to the pink that kisses the few, scattered clouds. It makes me turn off the iPod in my Subaru and roll down the window to hear them. Among my favourite sounds. And one of my cherished sights is the way starlings all swoop together as they leave. A group ahead of me takes the shape of a fish and floats over the cornfields that dip off to my right. All in perfect unison. Like synchronized swimmers. Diving and surfacing together. How do they do that? Kind of mesmerizing. Bad for driving.

When I was pregnant with him, I caught this astounding documentary at the Princess Cinema in Waterloo called Winged Migration. It was right around the time I'd begun to feel my own first flutterings of him and pretty breathtaking to witness. Birds seem to have some tie to my little man. Starting with that robin's nest above the side door of my farmhouse to the little mobile of three woolen owls who hover over his crib, representing the spirits of the siblings he might have had, the babies I miscarried in 1998, 2003 and last September, his own fraternal twin. They watch over him. It was an owl's "who-hoo-hoo-hooooo-hooooo" which greeted me my very first night in this farmhouse, just outside my bedroom window. In Celtic mythology, birds are considered messengers. It's very important to listen to what they're trying to tell you. Like that bird who guides the children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe through the forest to the safety of Mr. Tumnus' home.

The pines behind my home stretch up into the darkening sky and I bring him out onto the back deck. The constant, clamouring chatter of starlings surrounds us. I smile down at him in his seat and his hair captures a glint of sunset as my clap shocks the starlings into flight, halting their song; they simultaneously take wing together, dipping and darting across the back field, leaving my home. And theirs.

This month, I am heavy in preparation for selling this farmhouse. We stayed at my parents the past week so the rooms could be painted with soft, muted colours. Names like Earth Smoke, Smoked Trout, Soft Earth, Manitou, Tent, Tofino. We will be leaving this place. His first real home, and mine. I bite my lip. I've no idea if she will even sell before the snow flies. If not, I'll batten down the hatches and hibernate one more winter here and hope to move come spring. I've been here nine years and maybe it's time now. I admit the care of these 1.3 acres on my own for almost three years has been a bit of a challenge and will only prove moreso as he grows and demands more and more of my time and attention (though he gets pretty much all of it already). He needs, I think, a town versus this remote spot. I hate leaving here. It's one of a number of things breaking my heart right now. But I know a move will be better for him. I hope it will be better for me. Either way, it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. What's that saying? A rich child sits in a poor mother's lap. Realistically, I know we will both benefit from moving to an actual neighbourhood. With a shorter driveway. Better resources. With other children. Other families. Other parents. Other single parents, perhaps! I look forward to the idea of bicycling or walking to work. The main country road into town can get a bit dicey come the winter time. Life has brought so many changes since deciding to leave my common-law marriage almost three years ago now. And change is good, I remind myself. He is here with me now. It's a good time for this particular change to come...

But I will miss all these birds taking wing across the farmfields. The robins nesting in my doorway and blue spruce. The killdeer in my driveway. The starlings. Barn swallows. The blue herons flying with their long legs outstretched behind them over the back creek. Their nests on the third line way, high up in the trees. The hummingbirds at my front window and backgarden. That hawk my eyes always seek in one, special tree during my morning and evening commute each winter. The Canadian geese who land each Spring when the back field floods. One year, a few years back, a lone, white swan joined them there. When I was a little girl, I would read and re-read E.B. White's Trumpeter Swan. These days, I am re-savouring his (and Strunk's) The Elements of Style while attempting query letters to various editors of magazines. Another book on birds comes to mind: Too Many Blackbirds by my old American Lit professor, Dr. Ken Ledbetter. He died much too young back in 1993. A favourite memory is of his class the morning he informed everyone how to properly address a ghost upon encountering one. You must first ask politely, "Are you a good ghost or a bad ghost?" This proved helpful advice here in this farmhouse built in 1848. It is not without its own many and varied spirits.

I know the very cherished memories I will hold, from the cedar hedges to the smell of the woodstove, the sight of a 160-year old apple tree in blossom, the witnessing of the Aurora Borealis while standing in my front yard to the shooting stars of the Perseids each August seated on a Muskoka Chair out back: such rich and vibrant images will stay with me all my days once I leave here. That will be some good haunting.

I am writing this in the middle of the night. It's 3:30 a.m.. Stolen moments. Rising from my bed where I've just fed him, his arms are outstretched as though he is flying through his own dreams. I think about migration and about what makes a home. My own parents leaving their home in Ireland and emigrating to Canada. Myself making a new home with him somewhere else. Waterloo-Wellington County has been my home for so damn long, a large part of me wishes we were starting over somewhere farther away. Nunavut. Nova Scotia. New Zealand. There's a whole planet out there yet to discover together. But I know that this is home for me. The mennonite farms. All the local farm markets, small town and music festivals. And my own little sonshine. Whereever he is will define home for me.

For now, I watch the birds rise up to guide my way towards another beginning somewhere new and familiar at the same time. What comes to mind is my eldest sister's beautiful vinyl recording by Judy Collins of that old Sandy Denny song, Who Knows Where the Time Goes? It was composed the year I was born when she was only twenty. Wow. Forty-two years have come and gone. And these last nine years have flown themselves. The last four months especially. Did she ever get those lyrics right! They make me smile and tear up at the same time. But then, the Autumn, as it approaches this coming week, always makes me do that. It's my favourite time of year. And I cling to one, specific lyric that strengthens the journey I'm making and my own resolve: I have no fear of time.

Across the purple sky, all the birds are leaving
But how can they know it's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go
But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone while my love is near me
I know it will be so until it's time to go
So come you storms of winter and then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?

Music: Who Knows Where the Time Goes, Sandy Denny

Fireworks

Here’s what I’ve learned:
Things don’t always go as planned.

You dream of a homebirth. Of candles. Of soft music. The presence of strong, empowering women helping you through this, your first labour.

You surround yourself with them: there’s your midwife, your twin sister as your birth partner (the kind of strong woman who’s been through two homebirths already herself), your mum is there in the picture you’re making and she’s smiling, anxious but beaming. You are lucky enough to have your massage therapist offer to attend just for the experience of helping a woman through labour. You have four goddesses aiding you, touching you, whispering their love and encouragement while you descend into your belly and what lies there...

These beautiful faces surround you and walk you from room to room. They help you breathe through contractions that begin to grow closer together. That begin to grow more intense.

And then your water breaks and there’s meconium in it.
Here’s where things change from this pretty picture you’ve made…

There is zero hesitation on your part to transfer to hospital. Zero. Absolutely zilch.

Your sister battles traffic like she’s Mcgyver. Your massage therapist helps you through the stages of 6 cm dilation weaving through Wellington county in the back seat of a Toyota Tercel. She takes a photo of the license plate of the asshole who refuses to let us pass as we speed to the hospital. You watch the clouds, biting your lip and try to count them as you breathe through the sensation of having your uterus squeezed through a wringer.

Your thoughts are only on this baby within you and the journey she or he is making with you. To you. And your thoughts turn to meconium. You try to repress those ones though. They’re not helping your current sitch.

I want to talk about bravery. Courage. I’ve never seen so much of it in such a small, beautiful package. You are now 7cm dilated and been labouring for 16 hours and the pushing reflex has begun a little too early and you’re being told not to push. Don’t push. DON'T push. Don’t fucking PUUUUUSSSSSSSSHHHHHH.

It seems so small. Negligible. Three tiny centimetres of dilation separate this baby from me and my arms. It’s then I realize I don’t have the energy or stamina to handle what’s coming ‘cause what is coming is the most intense phase of labour: TRANSITION. I cave to an epidural. Naturally pitocin follows. And then the heart rate of this little package inside me begins to slow. It fluctuates, drops, then stabilizes. They flip me over back and forth like I’m a dolphin to get it back to normal. I’m thinking about waves. About each contraction as a wave. As water. Approaching the shore and then sliding away from it.

And I’m thinking about you. Only you.

Your heart rate drops and I begin to hum “dream a little dream” and watch it stabilize. I’m talking to you the entire time. I am whispering to you while 10 people wander around me: my homebirth team, doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists. I’m oblivious to anyone in the room but you – yeah, you there in my belly. You are my entire focus. You are the only one that matters.

The doctor suggests forceps and I just want to end the stress on my baby. To no longer have this little heart rate drop. Come out to me baby. Come out to my arms. The doc pulls and I push. I PUUUUSSSSSSSSHHHH.

My sister gives me the running commentary like she’s Ron Maclean: There’s the HEAD!!! The HEAD is OUT!!! Here comes the shoulder. Now the other shoulder...

And here’s where I give my final push and the absolute love of my life slithers from between my legs. They’re holding you upside down because of the meconium scare. The first thing I see is that you are a boy.

I have just given birth to my son. People are talking all around. I can’t hear them. My son. My son. My son. I have a son. I have a boy. A son. He’s mine. He’s all mine.

I have to wait to hold you. They suction your trachea and give me five minutes with you skin to skin. You are almost 10 minutes old when they place you against my breast.

So THIS is what Joy feels like. Shit, I wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t realize it was THIS all-encompassing. I feel humbled. Blown away. Breathless. I feel exhilarated and frightened. I remember this sensation while lost in the fog on the coast of the Dingle Peninsula 18 years ago. I feel a terrifying LOVE. Deeper than I’ve ever felt. WOW. Wowowowowowow. A terrible beauty is born....

We spend almost a week in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the local hospital. I move through this week sleep-deprived, like a zombie. Everything I do, say, breathe is done for you. I make pacts with gods I didn’t know I believed in. I double pinky promise everything so you’ll be okay. We are surrounded by preemies barely clinging to life, screaming their lungs out and you and I cling to each other like rafts in this ocean we're swimming right now. I feel lucky. You are full term. I feel so luckyluckylucky. I repeat it like this refrain is a bouy to embrace in this lake of doubt, confusion, fear. The boy in my arms. I listen to conflicting opinions as to what constitutes progress and I nearly go insane wondering which one will be the one that releases us to just go home. Just you and me. Home together. Safe. Away from all this. Away from these leads on your body. Away from this monitor. Away from that IV tube in your tiny, fragile head. Away from that damned nasogastric tube stuck down your tiny little nose that everyone says is my nose.



          So yeah. Let me talk about bravery. Courage in the form of a 7 pound, 13 ounce little boy. You move through it all with wonder. With quiet strength. With this stoic expression. With rarely a cry from your beautiful, pursed lips. You have a cowlick swirl on the top of your head reminiscent of Vincent’s “Starry Night” and I think back to that meteor shower that sent you flying through the night sky to me. The peak night of the Perseids last August. The night I began to bleed the cycle that would bring you to me. The night I sat out on my muskoka in the backyard and wished on about a million shooting stars that I could gaze into the dark pools that look up into mine now.

Last night was Victoria Day. I sit on the fourth floor by the hospital window in the dark with you sucking at my breast and the night sky is lighting up again. I can hear the boom of fireworks in the distance. But see, I get confused. ‘Cause I can't tell if they are shooting off inside me. In the core of my heart as I hold you instead of simply showering over Victoria Park a few blocks away. I’m banking on the first scenario.

It was 11 years ago today that I lost my first baby via miscarriage and, as we are finally released from hospital, I step across the threshold of my farmhouse tonight holding you, my son, in my arms and I look back at this journey I’ve made. The journey of 11 years. The journey of 9 months. The journey of a 21 hour labour. The journey of the last week. Your beautiful, devoted, selfless aunt drives us home through the country and I feel like I’ve been gone forever. The world looks different. Everything is so green. Was it this green last week? Was the sunset this beautiful? Were the clouds this white and fluffy and perfect? I don’t think so.

The world has changed. My world feels as new as yours.

I look at you now lying in your bassinette. You are swaddled and cozy. Three little owls, your spirit siblings, the ones I lost before you, float over where you sleep and keep a watchful eye. We are home. It’s just you and me now. BOOM. Those fireworks are still exploding in my heart.

Goddamn I love you. My starry, starry knight.


Photography: Courtesy of my twin sister
Music: Starry, Starry Night, Don Maclean

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