I have a friend who is going to have a baby this summer, and I’m trying to think of something to get her. I wish I could blame my lack of gift giving knowledge on the fact that my girls are 12 and 14, but I’ve never been the mother who actually knows what is useful in regards to the care and keeping of children. It’s not that I don’t care about my daughters, but I don’t care about the products so much. I never experienced the nesting phase, never liked breastfeeding, never once fretted over which pacifier to purchase (or whether to purchase one at all). I think admitting these things might mean I’m not really a mother. Who doesn’t nest? Who doesn’t love breastfeeding? Surely, there is something wrong with me.
I went to graduate school with my friend who is now pregnant. She and I were in the same Creative Nonfiction cohort, and after learning that I have two girls, she sent me the complete set of the Betsy-Tacy series. I remember chuckling to myself when I was pulling the thick paperbacks from the cardboard box they were sent in. Hadley was 6, and Harper was 4. We were still in the Fancy Nancy and Pinkalicious phases of reading. But my friend wrote on the card that came with the books that she loved these when she was a kid, and her delight in the stories and generosity in sharing them made me want to give them a try. Hadley and Harper loved the books. To this day, they still pull the now worn stories from the shelves.
Once, during a residency on Whidbey Island, there was a chance for us students to read our work to each other. I’d been working on an essay that dealt with the day my Aunt Lucy died from pancreatic cancer. The morning she died, I was 9 months pregnant with Harper, and I drove to my OB/GYN’s office fully intending to demand I get induced so I could have the baby and get to the funeral two days later (again, please don’t take my mother card away from me).
The entire essay was a mess. Way too emotional, not enough structure, I sounded crazy. Lauren Winner suggested I try to write it in the second person in order to get some distance from myself as the one who experienced it, and gain more control over the narrator, who is telling it. Also, the second person perspective allows the reader to take on the story – to share the burden – so to speak. And I really needed that. I couldn’t tell this story alone. That is, I couldn’t write it only for myself. I needed others to help me bear it.
So the essay was beginning to come together, and I was interested in reading it out loud, but I was scared. Too scared to sign myself up. I’d shared the piece with my cohort, though, and after a workshop, my friend erased her name on the reading schedule and put my name down instead with the title of my essay, “How to Have a Baby,” next to it.
And so, with my back to Mt. Olympus and the banks of the Puget Sound, and my face to friendly strangers, who were in the trenches with me, I read my story. I made them laugh. Some cried. Many said, “I feel like I knew Lucy,” which is exactly what I wanted.
It’s a worn out story, I think, but I was conflicted going off to graduate school as a mother. It felt wrong. But it felt wrong not to go, too. For the first time in my life, motherhood and writing allowed me the space and the grace to be totally at home in who I am and how I’ve been created. The mistakes I make, the feelings and thoughts I have, all that I know and all that I don’t know have a place in these two forces. I am painfully at home, and my friend gave me the opportunity to express that while the wind roared outside, while the waves lapped close to shore, while the whales on the trail just beyond the last cabin on the island swam into the deep and frigid blue.
I end up buying her a package of onesies because I’m not sure there is anything cuter than a baby in a onesie. I remember when I was pregnant with Hadley, I’d waddle into what would be her bedroom, open the top drawer of her dresser, pull out a onesie, hold it over my stomach, and whisper, “Soon, baby.”
I bought her some of those wrist and ankle bands that crinkle when a baby grabs them. I remember Harper loving those. She would squeal and smile as if grabbing a hold of them were the most phenomenal thing a human could possible achieve.
And I got her one of those travel diaper-changing mats. “Because people are disgusting,” I wrote on the card.
I feel confident they’ll be useful gifts. At least, that is my hope. I want to offer something good to the carefree girl who gave me stories and a chance to give away my own, and who is about to embark on the most marvelous and worn, well-loved story of all.
This is an essay I wrote for Exhale, a creative community centered at the intersection of creativity and motherhood. Come join us!
Loved reading this in the newsletter! Great writing.