Blank space, memory and feeling. Monuments, stone, love. Falling, falling, speeding ahead, no sight. There you go, Gertrude Stein. Out of feeling, into thinking.
Perhaps this is my impetus, the push - the shove - back into creativity. Solitude always did that for me. When you're busy and happy there's no reason, no time, no desperation for writing. Are you my friend, blank screen? Oh, to be alone, to wake every day fearing my solitude. These babies, my social creatures, my reasons for smiling and crying. What would life look like if I we were transplanted anywhere but here? Pick us up, O Great Hand, move us along to that place where we are Known and Loved. But not too quickly. Don't let them grow, please let them change. So childish, only a child. Not here, not there. This is the mortal discontent, the sadness that traps me and brings me back to the place of hope and longing. How loved is our Forever Home when our temporary shell is empty and cold.
So cold.
I am lonely. Alone, yet never alone. Am I weak, to not see the beauty, not love the temporal for what I'm learning? What am I learning that I did not know?
I know that I am weak, I am selfish, I am needy. I know. Please stop reminding me.
I want to see a therapist - at least then I would have someone to talk to - face to face. If I paid you to listen to me, would you be my friend? Can I listen to you? Do you exist?
Is our life just a series of repetitions? I am older, I have a few gray hairs, I've born children. Yet this life pulls me back, 17 years ago - SEVENTEEN - I was just as lonely, just as unsatisfied and powerless. One man's job moved me away from friendship into solitude. Seventeen years forward - repeat - another man's job moves me away. Hope rises and crashes. Am I better equipped for the isolation? I'm not sure. This time there are the lovelies, my poor babies. They deserve so much better.
Perhaps this is the shove into grace - perhaps that is the cycle. Forgiven, loved, joyful, lazy, easy, forgetful, sad, needy, lonely, humbled, repeat.
There is no conclusion to this. This piece does not end -
November 20, 2014
November 8, 2014
We're Weaning
Dear Mateo,
It's been three nights since we last nursed. Someday you may read this and not understand or remember what that means, but right now - it means everything. My sweet boy, my firstborn, my angel eyes...I cannot hear you ask to "nurse in bed," watch your little wheels turn as you try to come up with a reason to nurse that is most likely to elicit my sympathy and cave my resolve (this resolve is all pretense, my love). I nurse your sister in secret, too pained by your cries of, "I want to nurse because you just nursed Annie" to throw it back in your face. You are a jealous, while loving, brother and dare not stoke that fire any more. I want nothing more than to draw your head to my breast, let your pawing hands find their comfort. So many times these past few days I have almost - almost - almost given in. Even now, writing this, I want to run upstairs and snuggle you close, feel you search out the comfort you've known every. day. of. your. life. What cruel mother am I to deny you this basic ritual of your existence? What is life without it?
"You've given him more than 3 years." "You've been so patient and gentle with him." They tell me these things and I have no response, there is nothing I can say that will make three years seem like not enough. No one can understand - I doubt even another mother who has been in this position can understand. The mother/child breastfeeding relationship is that specific that only you and I - right now - can understand. One day soon you will forget and then it will just be me left alone with the memories and the twinges of loss. When you were a baby I would half joke that I would just nurse you until I had another baby and then go straight into nursing them, so I would never be without a nursing child. What naivete, to think that another child could take your place. The bond you and I have shared through your precious nursing is not the bond that Annie and I share - lovely as that is. You and I are our own, she and I something separate. I have felt a hint of what lies on the other side of this grief - I cherish my nursing Annie a bit more now, I look at her with fresh eyes - my only true baby (oh, baby, I will never stop calling you that - you will always be my baby, as I remind you daily). I snuggle you closer, tighter than I did before. I am brutally aware of you growing up too quickly and am more resolved than ever to respect your innocence and good intentions, to love you fully. These are the good things, the things I should choose to focus on through my sadness. But oh, this sadness. My tears soak our pillow as I stroke your hair back from your forehead and watch your eyes blink slowly and then shut. I tell you I love you apologetically, intensely, begging you to accept those words in exchange for the milk I deny you. You push me away, telling me you don't want to snuggle, you "just want to nurse" and a few minutes later wrap your arms around my neck and whisper you love me, you love me "so much."
I knew it would not be easy, but I never thought it would be this hard. I listened to others talk of weaning their older nurslings, how nursing sessions would gradually decrease until one day you realized you couldn't remember when the last time was. "How beautiful and sad," I would think, wondering if I would remember when that day came. I remember - November 4th, bedtime. I should have known it would not end easily, or quietly. When you were born Linda, the midwife's assistant, told me that she believed how a birth progressed is symptomatic of that baby's character. Your birth was days long, slowly progressing, intense, never ending and powerful. You came on your own sweet time, eyes open. Is it any wonder, then, that your nursing relationship would be long, intense, and difficult to bring to an end? My heart says to give in to your sweet pleas, to let you be the one who ends it - but my mind says it's time. I can't say exactly why, but I feel I will be a better mother to you if it ends. My body will be more patient, less touched out. My heart will have more sympathy toward you. I wish it were not this way - but I am only human. I gave you so much, my love. I give you so much. My lap is yours, my arms are yours, my heart is yours. You are not a baby anymore, I tell you this and it is true. You are a little boy - soon you will be a big boy and one day you will be a man. Time passes and our relationship must evolve with it. I am so grateful for those 3 years, 1 month and 11 days that I gave you my body to grow yours, my heart to comfort yours. There was so much more to it than just milk. Thank you, my son, for teaching me to give. You made me a mother, three years ago and each day over again. I am mourning, but also hopeful - this is a new season for us. I'm sure you will lead me somewhere else I've never been.
All my love, always,
Mommy
A baby nursing at a mother's breast... is an undeniable affirmation of our rootedness in nature. ~David Suzuki
It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment. ~Honoré de Balzac
Mothers ought to bring up and nurse their own children; for they bring them up with greater affection and with greater anxiety, as loving them from the heart, and so to speak, every inch of them. ~Plutarch
Breastfeeding is an unsentimental metaphor for how love works, in a way. You don't decide how much and how deeply to love — you respond to the beloved, and give with joy exactly as much as they want. ~Marni Jackson
Breastfeeding is a gift that lasts a lifetime. ~Author Unknown
It's been three nights since we last nursed. Someday you may read this and not understand or remember what that means, but right now - it means everything. My sweet boy, my firstborn, my angel eyes...I cannot hear you ask to "nurse in bed," watch your little wheels turn as you try to come up with a reason to nurse that is most likely to elicit my sympathy and cave my resolve (this resolve is all pretense, my love). I nurse your sister in secret, too pained by your cries of, "I want to nurse because you just nursed Annie" to throw it back in your face. You are a jealous, while loving, brother and dare not stoke that fire any more. I want nothing more than to draw your head to my breast, let your pawing hands find their comfort. So many times these past few days I have almost - almost - almost given in. Even now, writing this, I want to run upstairs and snuggle you close, feel you search out the comfort you've known every. day. of. your. life. What cruel mother am I to deny you this basic ritual of your existence? What is life without it?
"You've given him more than 3 years." "You've been so patient and gentle with him." They tell me these things and I have no response, there is nothing I can say that will make three years seem like not enough. No one can understand - I doubt even another mother who has been in this position can understand. The mother/child breastfeeding relationship is that specific that only you and I - right now - can understand. One day soon you will forget and then it will just be me left alone with the memories and the twinges of loss. When you were a baby I would half joke that I would just nurse you until I had another baby and then go straight into nursing them, so I would never be without a nursing child. What naivete, to think that another child could take your place. The bond you and I have shared through your precious nursing is not the bond that Annie and I share - lovely as that is. You and I are our own, she and I something separate. I have felt a hint of what lies on the other side of this grief - I cherish my nursing Annie a bit more now, I look at her with fresh eyes - my only true baby (oh, baby, I will never stop calling you that - you will always be my baby, as I remind you daily). I snuggle you closer, tighter than I did before. I am brutally aware of you growing up too quickly and am more resolved than ever to respect your innocence and good intentions, to love you fully. These are the good things, the things I should choose to focus on through my sadness. But oh, this sadness. My tears soak our pillow as I stroke your hair back from your forehead and watch your eyes blink slowly and then shut. I tell you I love you apologetically, intensely, begging you to accept those words in exchange for the milk I deny you. You push me away, telling me you don't want to snuggle, you "just want to nurse" and a few minutes later wrap your arms around my neck and whisper you love me, you love me "so much."
I knew it would not be easy, but I never thought it would be this hard. I listened to others talk of weaning their older nurslings, how nursing sessions would gradually decrease until one day you realized you couldn't remember when the last time was. "How beautiful and sad," I would think, wondering if I would remember when that day came. I remember - November 4th, bedtime. I should have known it would not end easily, or quietly. When you were born Linda, the midwife's assistant, told me that she believed how a birth progressed is symptomatic of that baby's character. Your birth was days long, slowly progressing, intense, never ending and powerful. You came on your own sweet time, eyes open. Is it any wonder, then, that your nursing relationship would be long, intense, and difficult to bring to an end? My heart says to give in to your sweet pleas, to let you be the one who ends it - but my mind says it's time. I can't say exactly why, but I feel I will be a better mother to you if it ends. My body will be more patient, less touched out. My heart will have more sympathy toward you. I wish it were not this way - but I am only human. I gave you so much, my love. I give you so much. My lap is yours, my arms are yours, my heart is yours. You are not a baby anymore, I tell you this and it is true. You are a little boy - soon you will be a big boy and one day you will be a man. Time passes and our relationship must evolve with it. I am so grateful for those 3 years, 1 month and 11 days that I gave you my body to grow yours, my heart to comfort yours. There was so much more to it than just milk. Thank you, my son, for teaching me to give. You made me a mother, three years ago and each day over again. I am mourning, but also hopeful - this is a new season for us. I'm sure you will lead me somewhere else I've never been.
All my love, always,
Mommy
A baby nursing at a mother's breast... is an undeniable affirmation of our rootedness in nature. ~David Suzuki
It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment. ~Honoré de Balzac
Mothers ought to bring up and nurse their own children; for they bring them up with greater affection and with greater anxiety, as loving them from the heart, and so to speak, every inch of them. ~Plutarch
Breastfeeding is an unsentimental metaphor for how love works, in a way. You don't decide how much and how deeply to love — you respond to the beloved, and give with joy exactly as much as they want. ~Marni Jackson
Breastfeeding is a gift that lasts a lifetime. ~Author Unknown
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