Tuesday's Child is Full of Grace (and Girlhood)

When I was a child, my mother kept a journal for me in which she documented and divulged some of her darker moments as parent to better explain herself in the event of her untimely death. Knowing my mother's acute propensity for self-absorption and her vampire-like ability to inflict emotional hurt in others as a mode of sustanence, I have not yet been able to bring myself to fully read it, especially since this entire pregnancy has been monopolized in my attempt to coordinate the physical care and juggle the emotional demands of "elder care" for the woman who gave birth to me. The difficult juxtaposition of my mother's struggles with Multiple Sclerosis and her sincere commitment to an astonishingly slow, take-no-prisoners march to the grave against the current bouyancy of my sunshiny life is not at all lost on me. Thinking only of the growing girl-child inside of me, I have struggled against returning to any reminder of the dark, overbearing, monster-filled shadows that my mother continues to bequeath as my birthright.

Of course, I was a loved child and a wanted child. I was fortunate in that my mother couldn't bring herself to leave me on the mountain.  (At least, not at first--my motherless descent from that mountain top came later.)  According to my mother, I was an "easy" child--precocious with words and intuitive with emotion but mild-tempered and painfully shy enough for it to be an endearing sort of thing in her moments of tenderness. Ever the aesthete, my mother's favorite activity was to dress me up and show me around.  I was her symbol of triumph in the race to overcome a failing biology.  As my little body grew into its own architecture and my brain into a stoic and resolved sense of personhood, my mother's body and brain slowly declined and succumbed to the ravages of her horrific disease.

It is no wonder why--in writing about my own impending motherhood--I choose to devote so much of this reflection to the mothering that I have known and, equally, to the lingering power of the mother-woman who still resides in my life.  Perhaps equally self-indulgent, I sit here with my proud little belly--the symbol of having successfully--and even, yes, triumphantly---navigated through the first 39 weeks of the rest of my life.

On Tuesday morning I am scheduled to give birth to the girl-child growing within me.  It is perhaps the one time in my life that I truly lack the words to explain my feelings which can only be described as an unbelievable depth of love I have for this child.  If this love could be measured in a physical sense, I envision it as the gallons of water pouring over the world's biggest waterfall.  The force and madness of this love is bound by each fragile and rushing molecule to a singular yet overcoming sense of purpose and direction.  (And as I sit here contemplating this feeling with my computer precariously situated on my diminished lap, I can't help but proudly place a hand on the kicks carrying on inside of me and think, "This is LIFE...to Life!...L'Chaim!")  I have no doubt that I am feeling the same primal, uncompromised and unquestioned connection to my child as my mother did at her own apex with me...and still does...

Although the sex of the child wouldn't matter in the slightest, I admit that I once--somewhere in the midst of my late adolescence--said a silent prayer that my first child would be a girl. Throughout this happy, healthy and extremely easy pregnancy, I have continued to pray for her in the long journey to her grand debut. I pray that she is a brave type of girl with a boldness and personal integrity that makes her a leader rather than a follower as she grows into womanhood. I also pray that she is brave enough to be humble and kind, and that she is able to let her heart soar while keeping her feet on the ground. And, of course, the mother in me hopes that she learns to be polite, but I have an equal amount of hope that she retains the confident, fierce wildness that I feel in her kicks. I truly hope she dances like no one is watching, and if she doesn't do this at first, I have every intention to show her how...

I cannot help but look back at my bruised and fragmented girlhood and not indulge myself too much by sharing that I have a sense of hope that mothering this child-full-of-grace may bring some balance I may have lost as my own mother retreated into the shadows of her disease. Realizing, of course, that we all do the best we can with the tools and means available, I am increasingly aware that my committment to this child comes from a place within me that has objectively forgiven my mother for being the person and mother she has become. For me, the journey toward forgiveness is the same one that brought me to this incredible apex.  It means that I will not seek to mother my own girl-child as a way of becoming the pain-filled antithesis of all of my mother's mistakes. To the contrary, mothering of my child is an opportunity to celebrate of all of my mother's successes. 

To birth, to mothering, to life and the brave act of living it...

To meeting my daughter face-to-face on the other side. May Tuesday's child be full of grace...

  
Namaste