The Big ONE.
And, a poem for my sweet girl on her almost-birthday.
Leonard Cohen once said, “Poetry is just the evidence of your life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
This year, a lot of life was lived and there has been a lot—a lot—of ash.
I wanted to commemorate my soon-to-be-toddler’s birthday with a poem, but a lot of my poetry during her first year has been dark and, at times, dissociative. Faint and papery, grey and chalky, fragile, remnant.
The poems speak to motherhood and its unrest, to my feelings and my fears: to the present, future; reality and memory and both’s edges. If I were to share here, they might be read as an anti-motherhood manifesto or one thousand-and one reasons not to have a baby, but the truth—and experience—is much more complex, and on many, many occasions: more light than dark.
Still, the first year has not been a rainbow unicorn sundae. I went from healing from a second-degree tear to nursing to not nursing and pumping to pumping and washing many, many little plastic parts to pumping and washing many, many little parts while working and working to write and writing while pumping. The start of postpartum was marked by intrusive thoughts that made me scared to be left alone with my child, then later: hypomania, depression, rage, and an autoimmune flare. I went from feeling outsized and achy and to feeling exuberant, impossibly thin, and sleepless (without needing sleep) to being my old self and old and bone-tired.
At four months postpartum, I went back to world of work, an act which filled me with intense worry, impossible guilt, and a feeling of surreality.
In the latest issue of blush, Sampson Starkweather writes:
sadness is the drug
of the state
sadness in the water
sadness in the air and land
we pay for sadness
we pay to release sadness
we are in pain
we pay to relieve pain
we remain poor
Being a new mom in branding who bought into a number of brands to be the best mom, I felt this deeply on my return to the “work force,” where I was worked to sell med-spa beauty to those in pain, infinite choices to the infinitely devoid, aspiration to a country at its knees: its people shorted, sidelined, squeezed—barely able to afford eggs and yet sold a ready-made war.
Aoife was born two days before Operation Al-Aqsa Flood (or the 7 October attacks). I remember T telling me, while we watched horror film after horror film awaiting the scheduled 41-week induction, this could be a real horror, would spark a real war—that we were on a brink.
While I delivered Aoife 13 hours after my water broke in the hospital (my water breaking just as my Foley Bulb Induction began), we watched scenes from the Middle East via our suite’s television, the sun shining grotesquely off plated glass in downtown New Haven, the world for me a blur of Nubain—my teeth chattering, hands shaking, wet towel on my head.
In the days after Aoife was born, the world felt precariously poised—unclear, unsteady, unsure, and yet our tiny family remained cocooned. Then, the days passed and T went back to work and Aoife grew and the light filtering through the glass obliquely sharpened and we saw through other pieces of glass what the unconscionable looked like.
For months, I could only think of the Palestinian babies born the same week as my child now being killed by the thousands. And, the poem I wrote to her—the one I share now—alludes to these children and all children and all beings too small and too young and victims of circumstance, senselessness, especially of the American kind.
For them, there is no car or train or ship waiting take them away nor is there a gilded spoon in their mouth feeding them pre-packaged biteable foods—and no gold in any spoon and no silver coating any tray. There is no food on a plate, or milk in a dish, or string for a kite, or soap in a tub. In fact, there is no food or water or play or shelter.
For many, there is no door to another door. For most, there are no doors—and no one coming.
I learned as a mother that maternal ambivalence does not mean indifference or uncaring (a common misconception). It, instead, means having mixed and contradictory feelings. That is: wanting very much to play with your child but then wanting to be somewhere else; enjoying your writing while your child is a room away, at the park, on a walk; forfeiting the small minutes with your baby to read the acclaimed Voice of the Fish or ride your stationary bike; wishing you could hold your baby longer and simultaneously wishing she would quiet, calm, fall—mouth open-into an untouched slumber, leaving you alone.
As a mother—and citizen of this world, I have learned this year to uncomfortably sit full of uncomfortable and contradictory feelings—feelings that move in and through me constantly like the two wolves: two wolves I am forever feeding in equal measure. I bat at my thoughts like a cat bats at a floppy toy fish dragged against walls, scratchy carpet. Back and forth, back and forth they go—and back and forth, back and forth I go: thinking there is a wrong and there is a right, and not knowing which is which.
And, so the poem…
I wrote this for Aoife (and a little for me). It is similar to a cento, and is comprised from words, phrases, and lines found in her favorite books, nursery rhymes, songs—A Little Horse; The Cat In The Hat; Hands, Hands, Fingers, Thumb; The Wonderful Things You Will Be; My Little Cuddle Bug; Oh, The Things You Can Think, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?; The Purple Monkey In A Bubblegum Tree; Rosie the Response Boat; Little Bunny Foo-Foo; Rock-A-Bye Baby; Skidamarink-A-Dink-A-Dink. The poem is a little light and sadly dark. It is also very much a product of its form: cento coming from the Greek word kentrone—or patchwork garment. Like motherhood, it is fragmented and fraying—odd remnants held together by feeble seams.
Wild, Bright
Climb inside
My shining moon
I know the sun is not
Sunny
And I have
Important jobs to do
Holding up a fish
On a rake
Day after day
Over the ocean
On the treetops
Back through the forest
When it is too wet
To go out
Saying
I see
I see
I see
What
What
Do I see
Maybe you
And that you could be
A bit
Of
Wonder and dream
At the end of the day
Make me
More beautiful
Polka dot wings
And tell me how
To take care
Of things much smaller than
The night
Underneath the moon
Where no shadows can stay
A little bird
Tangled
One fish
Two fish
Blue
Three chances
A black sheep
A toy ship
Some milk on a dish
This is the first time
There’s ever been
Somewhere new
A story
When the bough breaks
Shiny
Down the wall
A mother’s gown
Scooping up
Field mice
And the strings
And the books
A song
Beetle-black
And purple
And deep in the cake
My little
My baby
My darling
My day
One thumb
Two thumb
Rosy cheeks
Look at me
A Thing One and
Thing Two
A heart so enormous
And yet
Nothing at all