In the Scheme of Things

Sharing a post written when Claire was an infant:

I told George that our baby, Claire, was born carrying all her eggs inside her tiny body. He asked in amazement, “So you’re telling me she has our grandchildren inside her already?” I said, “Well, if she has children, yes."

Right now, it’s all beautiful potential.

Claire was a promise for me for a long time as well. Nine months in my belly, yet the possibility of her has been inside of me for my whole life. That must say something about the psychic bond between mother and child. For Claire and me, it’s been a particularly long journey. Forty-four years together, then George joined the mix and she became her own separate person. I like to believe that she was born wise, because she lived forty-four years as part of me before she started her own life.

It’s a wonder she or any of us are born at all. Remember when they used to give a prize to the thousandth customer to walk through the department store doors? It’s kind of like that. One lucky somebody gets to be the thousandth customer, but many, many more need to make up the nine hundred ninety-nine who go before.

And that’s just the half of it, literally. You get one shot to swim better than 300 million others or so.

Right from the start, the male and female impulse seem so contrary – on the feminine side, hanging out patiently and waiting for just the right moment to take the plunge, on the male, jumping from the gate and enduring the race. With each, there’s an indefinable measure of grace.

As I look at her sleeping, she is so substantially her, so uniquely Claire. The seeming randomness of it all makes me shiver.


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Views from a Passenger

I've been encouraging my husband to write a guest post for my blog for awhile. He would come up with one topic about Claire, another one about fatherhood. I would say, "Great! Can't wait to read it." Then, he wouldn't write it. So I was more than a little surprised when I woke up to find that he had written this piece while Claire and I were asleep. I was blown away that he chose this topic and wrote these words. I am lucky to be his wife.

I want to remark on the religious path of motherhood from the point of view of a father and a husband. By religious, I'm talking about the Latin root of the word, re legio: to reunite with things.

In giving birth, I've seen my wife, Rachel, reunite with parts of herself that were far away from her, or at least, parts that had been safely transposed into the intellectual archives of her past.

But when Claire arrived, I saw and heard Rachel touch base with things long gone: clarification of distant, vague moments that she knew had affected her. I saw her reach back to connect with the early experiences of her life, making religious connections.

I have made religious connections, too, but Rachel was the boxer, and I was the trainer in the corner with the spit pail. That's not a cop-out, but a fact: women take it on the chin, no matter how "involved" a father is. Claire passed through Rachel's body, not mine, and the echoes of that intimacy will always keep her a shade closer than I will ever be to Claire.

For Rachel, pregnancy was hard, and exhilarating, as religious journeys are. She suffered, got to know herself, and was transfigured. She got to know disappointment, and joy. She got to know midnight, as well as high noon. And I got to love her more deeply as I watched her take this ride, this scary ride, that she took partly for the love of me. What to say? I am thankful for my wife's courage to have a baby at 44. For her to have a baby at all.

And I am thankful my wife writes. Puts it into words. The "word" surrounding this religious experience. I love her writing, and I think, one day, Claire will treasure it as well.

And when Claire has branched off into her own life years from now, not needing us so much, Rachel and I will sit on the couch, hold hands, and leaf through her blog. We will read aloud the words she has put down about this incredible journey we took together. And it will be better than any photograph or home movie ever recorded.

- By George Demas

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A Mom with a Past

The Cloisters Museum in New York City is a great place to take a child on a rainy day. What better way to occupy a child for a few hours than to transport her to the Middle Ages? I’m carried to a time in the not so distant past too.

It was 1999, and I was planning a wedding at The Cloisters. Everything was set; the RSVP's had been taken. A month before, I called it off.

I would share with you the painful particulars about what went down, but I wouldn’t want my lawyer ex-fiance to sue me for libel. It wouldn't surprise me, even after all these years. Let’s just keep it vague, and say it was not a good period in my life.

Anyway, the reason why I am bringing up the past has less to do with him and more to do with Claire and me.

Moms all have a past. Claire doesn't know mine.

When I learned my mom had a life before me, I remember experiencing major cognitive dissonance. In the egocentric world of a child, it’s hard to understand that your mom existed before you. After all, your mom is your world.

And, from a mom’s side of the fence, giving birth is like being reborn. Becoming a mom is nothing short of a complete identity transformation. I do mark time as “before Claire” and “after Claire”.

This clear-cut definition of time and identity makes it tempting to put the bad relationship on the "before" side and be done with it. I have a desire to tuck away my almost wedding into a locked compartment in my brain.  I would like to join Claire in a place with no history. She’s oblivious to my past, she lives in the present, she represents the future.

But it’s tricky. On the one hand, I want to be with Claire in the moment, living as if the world was born when she was born. I want to believe like she does that The Cloisters was made purely for us.

Yet, I had her at 44. When her life started, I had already lived one. It’s impossible for a child to take away the experiences of my life.

I wouldn’t want her to anyway.

When that relationship ended, I felt like a turtle turned upside down, vulnerable with my soft underbelly exposed for everyone to see. It took me a year to right myself. I found I had the ability to surrender to feeling raw and lost. I found I could survive still. I found just how much the love of friends and family can feel like grace.

I walk with Claire as her mother, because of who I was before I was her mother. She doesn't need to know what has brought us to this place, but I do.

Still, it’s fraught to be at The Cloisters. Somehow, Claire seems to make me feel more present with both the pain and the beauty of life, of my life.

It's like I'm unearthing my past in an archeological dig. Claire has added another layer to the excavation.

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Post-Baby Body

The other day at the gym, I found myself on the middle bike between two single ladies on my left and two on the right. I didn't know for sure they were single. I just had a feeling born out of years of being single myself.

Let's just say they were young, energetic and one other thing that I was not…I was not wearing an outfit like theirs. Their outfits seemed designed for the gym. The clothes were put together with consideration for fit, performance and appearance. They each had shoes that matched their shorts, shorts that matched their shirt, etc. Their outfits suggested thought about the lift of the backside and the poof of the pony-tail.

I used to have gym outfits like theirs. Since becoming a mom, it's become hard to distinguish between the clothes that I wear at home and ones for the gym. My outer wear is likely to reflect my internal harried state. My gym clothes are sure to symbolize my lack of free time and the nature of my 24/7 job.

Frankly, I just don't care what I look like at the gym. I feel like a bad-ass dressing like a slob. I want my clothes to say, "I pushed a baby out of this body without drugs; I've earned the right to dress however I want!"

If this posture sounds obnoxious, please hear me out. It's not lost on me that not caring about clothing this vociferously seems oddly related to caring about it. Still, there's something empowering in this stance for me. My choice in clothes (or lack thereof) reflects the fact that my workouts have become more about taking care of myself and being healthy than using exercise to pursue a body that conforms to a standard of beauty dictated by others.

I'm not implying that woman with nicer outfits than me or women who are single and/or without kids are ill-intended in their workouts either. I don't know their intentions.

What I do know is that they remind me of pre-baby me. I spent too much time worrying about how I looked before I had Claire. Like many women, I've struggled to gain acceptance of my body.

Having a baby has been a rite of passage for me, in this respect. I've learned that my body is so much more than its appearance. I grew a baby with this body. That's a revelation. Some women do it more than once. I am in awe of them.

Of course, I still have days when I wish I had flatter abs or I worry about fitting into my skinny jeans.

On other days, I experience my body as bountiful. I look at my daughter, and it isn't possible for me to believe otherwise. She exists regardless of my physical appearance or what clothes I wear.

I feel grateful for the body that made her. I feel its power and its wonder. I deserve to feel this way more often.

We all do.


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Birth Record

Reposting today, because I watched the video again and felt sentimental.

I watched our birth video today for the first time. I had to get up the courage beforehand. I had a pretty crunchy birth – midwife, birthing center, no drugs whatsoever -- but I was never one to want a record of the whole scene.

I was pretty sure that I didn’t want the clinical perspective - a blow by blow, so to speak. I figured her birth would be better left filtered through the gauze of time and the haze of memory.


Then, while we were in the final stages of labor, George asked me and I changed my mind. At the time, I wasn’t really sure why. I guess you could say that I was a tad preoccupied, so it just didn’t seem to matter.

Actually, I think that’s the point. The only thing that mattered was getting her into the world safely. I didn’t care if someone was videotaping. The President could have walked in the room, and I wouldn’t have been bothered.

As I was watching the video today, I seemed to have this same focus. The gory details (and there were some) and the bits of my anatomy revealed seemed secondary to watching her come into the world for the first time.

I never really understood how people could describe the birth of a child as beautiful, given the pain and gore. Well, I found it stunningly beautiful. I stand corrected.

I swore I wouldn't give advice on this blog but, if you are having a child, videotape the birth. If you decide you don’t want to watch it, you don’t have to. You can always just delete it.

Or you may surprise yourself. I didn’t think I wanted to watch it either. I’m really glad I did.


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