Being away from baby for the first time

I went back to Minneapolis, only possible because we moved away, and now I can return to a once home, the place I cried at the idea of leaving. Like looking back on a cruel lover, moving I was surprised to realize how much stress and bad memories I have. I arrived into MN at night, a friend picked me up, J, and we went for a drink at Barbette's. I got a cocktail, I never do that, and fries. I dont get to sit at bar stools often and now if I do I want to take full advantage. Whereas before, back when everything was arbirary, when I was not a parent, I order cheap, placed no value on what I got from the bar. The point was mostly to be at the bar with friends. I ordered happy hour beer usually. Never the $10 hot rum drinks. But that is all different now. Going out is a chance to gorge on color, flavor, ideas, energy of strangers.
I had the next day to myself mostly, I was reading at the Loft in the evening and going by the University to hear a talk by my former lab manager. In between the talk and the reading I found the publicly accessible pumping room at Boynton. It was wonderful to take off my shirt and pump somewhere on campus, though I had to ask two people to get access. I was surprised to find that my thoughts kept going back to how low I felt after pregnancy and after my oral exams. I know that after big stresses I need a few days in the tropics (without inlaws!). But I have yet to employ this strategy. I was so lonely, terrified of being alone with the baby in the house all the time. I felt like I had lost my identity. I felt like work and motherhood were at odds. I felt like I would never get a job and would have a phd and do nothing with it. I wished I had never gone to graduate school. I feared my advisor would make me do things I didnt want in exchange for letting me finish. I felt sick with separation from everyone else, in love with my baby, absolutely, newly more in love with Robin. But still I felt like a prisoner to the house, my anemic recovering stitched up body.
When did things get better? When Robin finished his phd too. When we went out West for a vacation. When we went to Tucson for more vacation. When I started to get my period. When I finally got my official offer letter for my postdoc. When I knew what to do with myself and Byrd. When I was not overwhelmed to take Byrd to the grocery store. When I stopped feeding Byrd in the night. When Robin started sharing daycare with me again.
So I returned to my beloved city and pondered my saddest lowest times.
After my reading I had drinks with friends at Sea Change. It was great. I loved being dressed up, drinking fancy drinks, talking with all these people I love so much. I wore a new dress, in my size, my body back where it should be. Back where I want it to be. I wore a sweater over it though, too nervous to show my arms, shoulders, if my stomach looks pregnant still, if I look pudgy still. Even if I think I have lost all the weight, I still feel dis figured from the last year and a half. My body has been through so much change, it feels gnarled, changed, impure, lesser. But sometimes I can conjure such joy that my body works. A friend recently told me about a miscarriage, she said she felt like her body didnt work. And I felt relief. My body works. I grew a baby, I make milk for the baby.
The next night J and I went to Bar La Grassa - a scene of sexy gay men with nice asses waiting tables and bartending, drunk old men at the bar trying to talk with us, amazing food, J drinking Maker's Mark like there is no tomorrow. I went home feeling satiated for food, fancy, fun.
I arrived home close to midnight the next day. The airplane ride I tried to close my eyes and think about what I had done over the weekend, discussions of story structure, my plans. It was peaceful, much more so than usual. I came home better rested than when I got on in Minneapolis.
I came in and Byrd was squaking upstairs. I didnt know if Robin would want me to feed him or not since that would break routine. When I came up, Robin handed Byrd to me and I sobbed, almost tearless, but sobs came like waves through my body. Bryd smelled so of Byrd. And he was bigger. More boyish. Now i cant describe the baby smell - milk, pee, hair, cloth. I cant seperate out the parts, recall, but when I smelled it I collapsed.
I didnt miss the baby or Robin. I missed them and loved them, but it felt great to go home and see friends to have time alone to sleep in my own bed and do as I pleased and eat burgers and drink rum. None of the fancy food or scenes mean much in the long run, but it still felt so good. Mostly, it was a releif to not have the option to consider stopping whatever I was doing to go back to Byrd, not needing to justify time away.
Back, I feel good about our house, the nightly fires, cooking, being together, not being rushed. I feel strange not knowing what I will do, but the nerves and sickness of being new have died down. It felt boring today. Just being in the office working. Really boring.

Getting out

Last night I volunteered at a nobel laureate reading event. I was tired. I get nervous about going out at night, like I somehow think i might actually crawl under a table and just go to sleep in public. The actual event was lovely. The reader had a beautiful Caribbean accent. The imagery was lovely. But really, what caught my attention, what thrilled me was watching the audience arrive. The hair styles, the clothes, the lipstick, the hats. I forget how removed I am right now from the flow of the city or of anything. I work from home or in a secluded space in my writing studio. With the baby I walk around Lakes, we see runners, but not people who are out. I see friends and go to happy hours, but these are small gatherings, early evenings.

Acupuncture

I saw a crowd cut for acupuncture, I have always been curious, excited to some day have a reason to use acupuncture for healing. Since the pregnancy my back has been bad, my legs cramp, my ankles stiff. I lost a lot of blood when I had the baby, my emotions have been all over, I have worried excessively over the well being of both my husband and baby as all this is so new and so fragile and am astounded by how quickly your life as you know it can be taken away.
This was a community acupuncture place with the idea that treatments could be much cheaper if they are not so individual. There is one open room, everyone is clothed, you can see and hear each other. The acupuncturist reads our paperworks, whispers to us and then begins. I asked, "Will it hurt?"
"Less than childbirth," he said. And the fear and intensity of childbirth entered the room. The way labor starts and you can not leave it behind until it is over entered the room. The first needle did not hurt, the second made me aware of a bulb in my hand, the third felt like a shot in the back of my hand, the fifth was like a booster shot in the side of my hand. It felt unbearable, I was trying to breathe like I was in labor, my soul laid bare moments before in the pains and excema and fatigue were all in the room. He put a needle in my ankle. If this is about healing I have to let myself flow, I thought, and tears spilled out. The acupuncturist did not notice at first, when he did he said, "Oh honey." He offered to stop, to take the needles out, I could give the treatment to someone else. He did not stroke my face, reassure me, tell me it was okay, in short he did not take control of the situation. The tears, I later decided, were a form of opening, when he appeared like a limp noodle, "we all have problems, me included!" the wave of emotion dissipated and I felt in control again. I am used to being in control.
I have noticed that events or moments can make me cry, and it feels good, it feels good like those tears have been weighing on my cheeks and only now could flow out. It feels like not a matter of opening up and dealing with things, but that I need the right space, the right person, the sense of the tears landing in someone's hand, in some landscape, escape in the ecstasy of sex. Late in pregnancy and early postpartum I had crying spells where I could not stop, at first they felt really indulgent and good. The first came after hearing the fetus heartbeat, I was so relieved, so freed to know it was still there, still growing.
What did I get out of acupuncture? My right hand is really stiff from not moving for so long. I realized that there is a pool of pain and confusion and sadness and the sense of being overwhelmed inside me and I am looking for ways to let that out and that it can not all be self generated. I am looking for portals in people, art, landscapes, music, experiences.

the language of food

If you need to see your grandmother's face again, to hear her voice, to see your father, long dead now. If you need to remember what it was like to run through the park, to bike to grade school, to swim naked at the beach and be two feet tall. If you can not remember. If there is something you left behind, a kind of happiness, a kind of sorrow. If there were words that someone gave you, words you carry with you as you push yourself to finish graduate school. Words that you carry with you each time you know you are not good enough, not smart enough, not interesting enough. If you can not remember who you are. If you need to know you are worth something. Eat yourself into your past. To eat the cinnamon, clove, ginger, molasses christmas cookies of your youth is to return the body to the yellow kitchen in rural Virginia. If you were to fly back to this home, rent a car, you would circle the area again and again. The forest and swamp and yard and sky erased by a parking lot and a suburban strip mall. The air is thick with humid exhaust.
We are the language we use, the thoughts we have, and the practices we do. You do not become a ham sandwich, apple, two cookies after lunch.
If you want to bring your body back, if there are ways of being, ways of feeling you can not remember, the language of food is the language of memory. It is not what you eat, but the construction of flavor and smell that link you breath and posture to the past. There is a memory in the body, memory that does not have thoughts or sentiment. Muscle memory of other times other ways of being that might now be foreign. The way you eat is the language, the way you prepare food, that you never prepare food for yourself, that you never sit down. These are all language. These are a discussion, a dialogue, a shouting match with your limbs and reflexes.

One friend's answer to being an asshole

I have meetings with writing groups monday and tuesday this week. We leave thursday for ten days. A friend wanted to meet to discuss a wedding shower we will throw for another set of friends who threw both of us showers. She wanted to meet wednesday. I said sure. Robin was like, "what are you thinking?!" I thought as an exercise to not be an asshole I should just stop overbooking. So I told her we should reschedule for when I get back or talk on the phone. I explained about my work colleague and my fear of being an asshole all the time. This friend's response was that everyone, not just parents, are assholes sometimes. That did not make me feel better. Is it just part of being human to be an asshole?

Does being a parent mean being an asshole?

I was at a party yesterday in the sun, standing around a table of chips and candy and fruit. The party was mostly people from work and then a few friends of the hosts from their neighborhood. I chatted with whomever, I felt tired, happy to be in the sun, happy to watch Byrd crawl, to talk with anyone or no one. There was a woman, LM, who runs the lab I work in. I say hello, and apologize for last week, I dont think it is a big deal, my apology is more of a greating. She takes her time to answer, tells me that she is really angry. I apologize and try for an explanation. She tells me she felt very disrespected. I want to leave the party. I dont have energy for this tension. I want to say, how could you expect me to keep track of anything. Or, dont you realize I cant remember anything. Or, dont you realize I am not 100%. Or, dont you realize how sleep deprived I am. Or, cut my some slack. Or, do you really expect more from me right now. Or, I dont have daycare and I am just trying to get work done as best I can.


I had the appointment to meet her at 1pm last thursday, a colleague I am trying to finish a paper with called and said he would be driving through town on the way back from field work and could he stop by to talk things over. He said he was in a rush and it would be brief. He thought he would make it around 1:30. He lives 2000 miles away. So I call LM and explain, she says no problem. Long story short, I start meeting with LM, colleague calls, I go meet him downstairs, the meeting ends up taking two hours, LM now has to go to department seminar. I sent her a text message and later an email. I did not hear back. She had told me, "no problem, I have hours of work to do."

Do parents get extra slack? Doesnt everyone have an excuse, something going on in their life? Do I really deserve more. Sitting in the sun, now feeling a bit of a knot in my gut, LM still at the food table, me avoiding her, also not wanting to seem like I am having too good of a time while she is angry at me, I wonder if I feel too sorry for myself. Why should I feel sorry? I have a wonderful baby. I have a wonderful partner. I love being a mother, I am in awe of watching a small human grow. It is the best thing that ever happened to me. Life is no longer arbitrary, I am with baby or not with baby, and in each case there are things that need to be done. So why do I feel sorry for myself? Is it trying to be more than just a parent? Is it the juggle? Will I now be an asshole, self consumed by my own needs and sense of importance?

I wrote LM a card to send in the mail. How else do you make your apologies clear? I am still asking myself if I feel too sorry for myself and whether I am going to have to let go and be an asshole sometimes. Like I let go and let the house be messy. Or let go and not do things perfectly.

body memory

I read a book about a woman recovering from a rape (Telling a Memoir or Rape and Recovery - Patricia Francisco Weaver). It was set it my neighborhood. I would never choose such a book. It is strange how just reading about rape makes it seem more likely, makes me put the chain lock on our door at night. A woman in my discussion group said that if nothing else our group was worth it just for having made her read the book. For her though the story was a reflection of her own past. For me the echoes came from the trauma of childbirth. I have suffered very little bodily harm in my thirty years. I can remember cutting my hand on a tin can and bleeding, I was home alone and called a medical student friend. I knew I was interrupting a romantic evening. I knew rationally that you dont die of tin can cuts. I almost fainted sitting there alone with a was of toilet paper on my hand, my eyes teared up. Just to know the threat of bodily harm shakes the soul. After Byrd was born I had violent childbirth dreams. I cried. I thought about the labor and felt angry. With some time and reflection I realize that any birth (sort of like any childhood and any parents) would have probably left me angry. There are few right answers, many choices, countless risks. Eight months later I am angry that I had to be induced and could not just wait for my body to go into labor. And I am angry that the midwife would not let me change pushing positions. I kept saying that I wanted to get on all fours. She had me on my back, knees held to my ears. It is a position of powerlessness and straight uncomfortable. But I also know there could be many worse midwives and that many doctors would have induced me in a more violent (i.e., fast) way and maybe moved towards C-sec or a vacuum. There are a few gifted baby deliverers out there, and like most things there are many mediocre people out there.

What really got me about the book about recovery from rape was that we have thought memory, things we can articulate, narratives. And we have body memory. When Weaver had her child the labor brought on unexpected flashbacks to her rape. Not memories or reminders, but her flesh and blood relived moments of the attack. Her recovery seemed to be a journey of stumbling that really found some release ten years later with massage that lead to bodywork.

Body memories I am aware of for myself include how I feel when I am in my hometown and my recent fainting spells. When I return to my childhood town I am taller, I am more confident, I have a sure sense of myself in the world. These trips are often stressful and force revisiting of emotionally difficult family and all the mess of childhood and my parents' divorces. Even still, I walk taller, my feet know the ground, I breath lighter.

I have always had some fainting spells, postpartum they became daily or weekly. The waves of fainting come when I am tired, standing, nervous, talking to people, around work people, in places I feel trapped, hungry. Each time they occur it multiplies the experience of fearing them, thinking about them. My body remembers feeling faint standing talking to a professor at a party and so the next time....and the next time...I feel trapped in this cycle and I have not found resolution. When I read this book I wanted to run out for bodywork, but I dont know what kind or where to go.