On August 5, 1965, just fifty years ago, I entered St. Elizabeth's hospital in Dayton, Ohio, and gave birth to a beautiful dark haired little baby girl. I was only twenty years old. I had been waiting a long time for her arrival, walking about my life in the middle of a sticky humid summer feeling a bit like a miniature elephant, and on that very day I found myself helping my husband and some friends move our furniture from one apartment to another closer to the center of town. Certainly an odd thing to do when you're about to give birth, but then my life up to then had been anything but normal or by the book! That evening my husband and I went to the Little Arts movie theater on Main Street and watched one of Ingmar Bergman's impossibly esoteric films, called "Wild Strawberries," I think. And then, miraculously in mid film, I felt my body talk to me, and I said to the man next to me, "it's time."
The birth ended up not being natural as I had wished, simply because I didn't have it in me to do the breathing properly, I was suddenly terrified, and in dire pain. She popped into the world looking perfect. And I remember thinking, "well that makes sense .... she took her time getting here!" In a surreal gesture of maternal love, my mother had arrived from New York to be in attendance, and I remember her staring out the hospital window and laughing at the nuns romping about playing tennis the day following the birth. I was so hot and so exhausted during those few days that everything felt like a slow blur. The next thing that stands out in my memory is standing over my daughter's bassinet and staring at her late at night, night after night, watching her breathe. I had a first mother's anxiety about her survival, I expect, and I kept up this vigilance for what seemed like a long time. She always breathed perfectly, and so I adjusted to diaper routine, sore breasts, and a killing fatigue. This was the beginning of my journey into motherhood and as I write this it strangely doesn't seem so terribly far away... On that day my entire life changed dramatically, and I now often struggle to picture who I was before this amazing event.
I am interested in reflecting on just how bringing a baby into the world changes us. I suspect there are all variety of transformations, since women are all different and come to this in varied states of mind and heart. Some women prepare diligently, reading Dr. Spock and books on child development, and some spend decades just waiting for the right time in their lives, some must work extra hard to make it happen, and some bravely choose to go it alone. For some it happens to them. That was what my life looked like. I had not put motherhood on my to do list at age eighteen or nineteen, and thus when I found myself facing it, I plunged headlong into it without any map to help me. I was scared mostly, and unsure of myself and my marriage. But I possessed a will that was formidable, and I put my head down and eventually figured out a way to respond to the helpless little being before me. She was a delightful baby, not too much fussing or crying or illness, and that was her first gift to me. It all felt rather magical and surreal, and I learned how to cherish her; my earlier aspirations to become an educated woman with a career in international diplomacy went "poof" and vanished in the steamy midwestern air. All of a sudden I was a mother. When a child arrives, all else becomes secondary. And that meant my marriage too, I guess. Friction and frustration arose in those first years between my husband and me because neither one of us had the energy to tend to one another, and we were too young to see that everything was terribly out of balance.
I think the first thing I was taught was self sacrifice, and then came love ... oozing from her cherubic face with the dark dark eyes. I felt it and I felt sure I could give it. For a while anyway. And then some three years later, in a different place entirely - my hometown of San Francisco - I brought another little girl into the world. She was very much on time, she came quickly, though her actual birthing involved some physical trauma and difficulty, which caused her little infant head to appear banana shaped, a fact she frequently mentioned with regret. Of course that didn't affect her stunning good looks as she evolved from chubby roll-poly little thing into a wiry and feisty little blond haired girl. It was the late sixties in San Francisco and the hippie movement was in full swing with all the flowered Indian dresses, patchouli oil, marijuana, and the devil may care attitude about life. I didn't every choose to be a hippie - it just happened to me. Like becoming a mother for the first time... And so my daughters had to navigate a sometimes murky landscape of too many adults, drugs, strobe lights, and loud music. Far from the "Leave it to Beaver" or "Ozzie and Harriet" families that had inhabited our television sets in the early days. She became sick right after birth, but recovered quickly and grew into a strong and willful little person. Clearly she was not destined to be the "good one" in the family! She didn't care, and neither did I. Her first gift to me, beyond her strong spirit and beauty, was the challenge of meeting difficulty with compassion and patience. She was my teacher in this, as her sister had been a teacher about love and cherishing. These lessons, like most important ones in life, took a very long time for me to learn!
My adult daughters have taught me a few wonderful things in this life: the profound place that family occupies in our lives (I had never known this, growing up in a fragmented unattended family of my own), the importance of holding our differences with love and understanding, the need to live in the moment, the importance of really listening, and the joys of being playful while eating mouthfuls of whipped cream. These are things I didn't have in my tool bag at the age of nineteen when I married their father. But growing up with these beautiful little beings took me on that journey of learning. I went on their camping trips, I created sprawling and celebratory birthday parties, soothed fears in the night, learned how to sew halloween costumes, became involved in their elementary school, and I tried my best to witness and understand their individual struggles. I didn't always succeed, and after about fourteen years of marriage my sights started to expand outward and I knew I needed to return to school and the possibility of finding my way in the larger world, as both my girls were involved in high school and social lives and I thought the time was right. Eventually our family dissolved and pain and suffering came, and we struggled for too many years to understand why people cease loving each other, or run away and do confusing things. The good thing was that none of us gave up on each other really...
The motherhood path was not always a smooth one for myself and my daughters .... Perhaps most mothers could say this as they looked back at their families. We have what is most important, though, and that is a willingness to look each other in the face with love and understanding. I think we have been teaching each other this for all these fifty years.
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