I have a lot of experience with birth. To start, I was born. So there’s that. I came out of my mother- of course I don’t remember. Maybe there is an old man in a cardigan smoking a pipe who could put me in a trance and lead me to believe I was visualizing my own birth. But I do not have a deep desire to witness the folds of my mother as I make my way down and out. I have birthed four children of my own and lost one in an early shattering of dreams and thick blood on a bathroom floor, alone. I have woken up to slick sheets drenched in amniotic fluid and pains so deep the earth shook. I have soaked so many blankets with breastmilk and tears and the swollen sadness of a “being” leaving my body. I (almost) broke my body to bring my children here, to me, to us. I wanted to break my body and keep breaking if it meant I could continue finding this ecstasy of love. And, my oh my, this love is a vast, deep endless gorge of beautiful rhythms and mysteries and clammy, tiny hands in the nighttime.
My second child, my son, he cried. So much. It hurt. I was bleary and lost and wandering around England with a pram, a one-year-old and my screaming gorgeous boy. He shot out of me desperately fast, a burning, searing deep pain of 9lbs. 8oz. with my resilient British midwife telling me to slow down. My animalistic voice rising up to anyone who would listen: “I need him out now, NO….put him back in, I’m bursting, I’m exploding, I can’t do this, where is my husband, “Jesus loves me this I know”, it huuuuuurrrrttttts, I’m bleeding, I’m dying, stop, stop, stop, now, now, now, now”. And he arrived. Squinting and blinking, huge and chubby with a head of hair like a mini Greek god. Bliss.
Until he cried and wouldn’t stop for one year. Until I sat in my mesh underwear on a stupid, hard bench matching my screams to his. Until the day I fell down the stairs in an exhausted heap, and he flew out of my arms in a comedic, slow-motion kind of way and then landed back in my arms with a sickening thud. He was fine. I was not. Until I would plug my ears and rock back and forth begging the angels to make him stop. Country music sometimes calmed him. And a gaudy blue and yellow swing. I would put him in there and tip-toe backwards with slow, methodical footsteps and stretch my pinky finger towards the kitchen-I’m almost there, there is food in there and coffee and I can almost reeeaaaaaccccchhhhh, nope. My husband and I took him, upon suggestion, to an osteopath- a calm, striking British gentleman who manipulated his head and neck to “guide him back through the birth canal.” I guess so he could be re-born? I didn’t get it. And neither did my son. He just couldn’t “be” in the world quite yet.
He needed a minute.
I rode the subway today- 4 times actually. I love the subway more than I should. It is a cozy moving tube of colorful characters all with the exact same goal- to get somewhere in one piece with as much ease as possible. We all offer seats (Canadians really are so very nice) and sway with each other and (god forbid) wink with relief. “I got you, sit here, my love, your legs look more tired than mine, I get off at the next stop.” Thank you, sir, with the slick black hair and white tee. I love you. And I love you strange man oddly dancing and contorting along the connector plates. You got this, buddy.
As I sat on the thinly-upholstered subway seat with my earbuds and delicious book and cool girl glasses, I thought I might stay for the entire day. I might just never get off and ride from end to end until they make me leave. Until I’m forced by the calm robot lady to exit the train, and I have to stumble into the sunlight above, blinded and rushed and panicked and faced with the reality of a new city, parenting, sadness, bank accounts and lost connection. Oh my tube of beautiful people, hold steady, the next station is approaching. We are getting shot straight into the real stuff. Straight into a life we may or may not be ready for.
As I heaved myself up the stale grey stairs that definitely smelled like spilled coffee and pee, I got teary. My tears have no filter. They never “mind the gap” but instead leap right through with great gusto in any situation. I emerged onto the busy, loud sidewalk adjusting my backpack and squinting at my Google maps and fumbling with an untied shoelace. I wanted to run back to my tube, my people that understood my tired legs. Instead I stood in my shaky ready-position on the city concrete as a belly-deep silent sob escaped from my insides.
Oh, my precious son, being born into the world is so very hard.
I might need a minute.
