For much of my life I thought myself unhappy. I thought that I'd be happy once the "next thing" happened. I tried to fight this feeling, made the tagline of my life, "Endeavoring to live in 'now,' not in 'soon.'" I struggled greatly against pressing ever forward to some future place where I'd finally feel fulfilled.
This has changed in the last two years. Before Ramona was born, I believed having children would be the thing that finally completed my happy scene. It was the "next thing." After she was born, I was, for the first time I think, legitimately unhappy. Not depressed, just miserable. I found myself finally and unavoidably confronted with my great depravity, with my insatiable desire for ever-greener pastures.
Here I was, living a dream of mine, and I was full of bitterness: giving birth had been a waking nightmare, breastfeeding was painful and stressful, and the always, always-present demands from Ramona became infinitely taxing. I had crossed over the green hill and found myself in a vast desert valley. And it was here, in this desert, that I gave up on looking forward to better days. I realized that the future holds no unbreakable promise of greater happiness—it may in fact hold greater pain. It's a thing I always knew in my head was possible but never believed in my heart would come to pass.
As day by day I began to fall in love with Ramona (the nature of her birth did not allow for that instant connection some mothers experience after giving birth), I also experienced sorrow upon sorrow. When Ramona was a week old, there was a death in the family. Around that time breastfeeding took an awful dive and we resorted to pumping and dropper feeding. I became very nervous about Ramona's feedings, and when she had a nursing strike a few months later, I began a hard journey through delayed letdown issues that never really resolved for as long as I was nursing her. I felt lonely and isolated from other mothers; I had a hard time figuring out how to balance mothering with my own personal needs. I wrote a whole series of heart-sore poems like this:
Eve, Fallen
Somehow—between baby showers and birthing class—
I missed that when this bewildered sea creature
wails her awakening to the world,
she will demand my breast at each hour,
creasing and blistering until, in infant’s Eucharist
she drinks blood from my nipple:
drains milk and life from me
so I shiver and fold like a dry leaf.
My eyes hollow, even my heart
hollows as I kindle
this tiny flame that was lit from the ashes
of my body. She nestles clenched, anxious,
lost in this cold world;
I am all pain and weariness. But I am also
mother, feral instinct,
fierce protector.
I pull her toward my warmth; whisper,
This is the good
place. I’ll hold you tight ‘til it’s better.
But as all this was unfolding, I was also learning finally how to live in the now, how to be thankful for the beauty still present in my life, for the simple things: a glass of cool water; clean, folded diapers; a ray of light piercing through the living room curtains; blue snow glimpsed out the window during a late-night nursing session. I thought to myself, Perhaps things will get better. But maybe they won't. I'd be a fool to not search for light and loveliness in my life right now.
And so I found the grace in all that pain. In many ways, my life is easier now. But the lesson has stayed with me: revel in whatever beauty is in this one day, this one moment, even if the big things are all going wrong, even if I'm crying in pain or screaming in frustration. Acknowledge the beauty; it's there—and it is the only guaranteed good because tomorrow might be greener, or it might be a vaster desert.
If I can let the light in on the dark days, I will be all the more able to bask in the light of the best and brightest days.
I have let go of wistful dreaming for the future. I realize sorrow is probably lurking somewhere in my future, sorrow that may match that of the past. But I don't dwell on that either. Instead I take the gift of today and do my best to be ever thankful.Labels: breastfeeding, contentment, existential, gratitude, memories, motherhood, poetry, spiritual, writing