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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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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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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In the Scheme of Things

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 with me my whole life. That must say something about the psychic bond between mother and child. For Claire and me, it’s been a long journey together. Forty-four years together, then George joined the mix and she became her own separate person. I like to believe that she was born wiser than the rest, because she lived a half a lifetime as part of me before started her own lifetime.

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.

Right from the start, the male and female impulse seems 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.