Postpartum

Disregard the psychopaths and the narcissists for this experiment. The biologically broken outliers. Why are there negligent mothers in the remaining numbers? The weak, the addicts, the whores? Why is loving another with earthshattering maternal abandon not enough to make a woman super-human? Whipping and slashing anew at whatever demons wait outside the hospital doors?

When all that matters is the heart in the effort.

Nothing is elemental, and everything is, in that white-hot chasm that opens to sweep in a new soul. Nerves are exposed. Does cool breath on a wound hurt, or help? Is the water cold, or hot? Shall we seek air and light or will we, my baby and me, heal 40 percent faster covered? Currents of emotion touch parts of brain untouched before. Labor is Annihilation of Self in Surround Sound.

Did she have a self?

She will never be more vulnerable than in childbirth. She will never be more pinned. The lucky arise with a life more beloved than their own in their arms. The unlucky have demons in the room.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110428/NEWS/304280046/Shackled-mom-wins-case?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

The Mother I Cannot Call on Mother's Day

There comes a point, in the process of falling in love, when it’s time to get down to brass tacks. You somehow have to get the difficult questions into the conversation, to figure out what it is, exactly, you’re getting yourself into. Taking advantage of a lull, you might press tongue to upper lip and look toward the sky as though a random question can be found there. So, um, what does a professor get paid exactly? How many children do you have? Any diseases I should know about?

And perhaps most important of all, for a woman, What kind of mother did you have, growing up?

“Flawless,” my husband-to-be answered, in a flash.

This was bad. The poor guy with the flawless mother was never going to find that again, most especially not in me. I’m not saying he or all men are trying to resolve an Oedipus Complex with their selection of partner, not at all  --  but for them a mother seems to set a certain baseline standard for what an adult woman is. I could have been a huge improvement over Depressed Alcoholic Mother, or Trapped Emotionally Distant Mother. Smother Mother would have been great, as I only rarely develop the clinginess of a baby monkey. But just my luck. “Flawless.”

Worst of all for me, she really was. Her Southern upbringing was evident in every word that she said, in that slow, comforting, throaty drawl that, really, who couldn’t love? Tall and regal, she had just the most perfect frame on which to hang 1950s fashion. Picture June Cleaver, except born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee  --  for real. She was quiet and strong. Messes were cleaned up before the children looked over their shoulders to notice them, and she was reliable as the constant flow of new mornings since the dawn of time. Always found precisely where she was supposed to be. If Mama was not waiting at the bus stop as expected when the children got off, they freaked --  surely some terrible fate had befallen mankind and they were now standing on an evil alternative planet. For a whole lifetime, she steadfastly continued to wear classy, understated skirts and heels, preserving her boy’s vision of motherly loveliness decades and decades into his adulthood.

Well, I am tall.

* * *

  

Doug’s mother is 85 years old, and has Alzheimer’s Disease. Much of who she is has been torn asunder. I want to cry when I think about it; I want to give her back "flawless." The magnificent managerial skills she had that kept her family's world running so smoothly for so long. Those who never have experienced Alzheimer’s in their families may not know: suffering is involved. Sometimes. It is not a disease that, “thank heavens,” takes the patient’s every conscious understanding away, so that he or she at least does not know what is happening. She has waking nightmares terrifying as any that anyone could imagine, without even a small child’s capability to realize she is awake and the dream is not real.

 

Her husband of 60 years, Doug’s father, is able to provide her with the very best of care. It is no small relief that we can trust in his complete devotion to her. That is a gift, from a father.

We can’t be in Doug's hometown on Mother’s Day, but I wanted to send this message in a bottle out into the virtual world. Much of who Doug’s mother is has been torn asunder, but the essence of her can always be found, even now. If she has difficult moments or even hours, the girl raised up with Knoxville manners will be back. Her blue eyes will crinkle again with a childlike joy that she has always had, in the company of her family, regardless of whether she recognizes us. She will fold her hands characteristically, quietly, in her lap, then lift one in a sideways motion swiping the air, as if to say, oh, you! The deep pitch and roll of her Southern drawl remains. Above all, the woman sitting in her chair in the nursing home is, and will always be, a mother. Nothing, but nothing, can take that away.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

Today, a break from the "Corporate Chronicles" series, because I am busy falling madly in love. How's a person supposed to think of anything else but the object of her obsession, under these circumstances? Stomach all fluttery; aching constantly for the moment I will see this girl again at last; sweet sweet image of her face on the insides of my lids every time I close my eyes.

I am in the complete destabilization stage. I feel dread just below the surface, knowing I could be wrecked beyond all repair if something goes wrong now. I am terrified of ever losing her. I've not yet discovered the maddening habits that could shift this new love into something a little more realistic. In other kinds of love, the little annoyances could have something to do with squeezing the toothpaste wrong, or eating up every last full-size tortilla chip in one sitting (leaving a few salty crumbs that only saliva-covered fingers could gather up), or the constant presence of background noise  --  when the damned TV and radio buttons just won't freaking stay off. You know, the stuff that makes other spouses  --  not me, of course  --  ask "for the love of god are you trying to drive me insane???" In this case, reality might set in if my horse has a tendency to spook at trees even though we live in the temperate deciduous forests of the Southern Appalachians. Perhaps I will have to fight her head constantly on the trail, because she wants so bad please-please-please to eat up every single tuft of new grass along the way. Maybe she will shatter the peace with abnormal gaseousness.

Who cares? I'm in love.

My family deserves an explanation for this unexpected turn in my affair. They deserve to know what's going on, what's so different about now when I've always loved all my pets, including the yearling filly that came into my life as just a wee babe. Her name is Salsa. This change in my love for her might be especially surprising to those who know me best, because I'm not silly about my pets. Heartless, you might say, depending on where you stand on the pet-love spectrum. No high-pitched "oh lookit the pretty baby, pretty pretty little babykins" will ever come out of my mouth. I don't give treats. I read the pet food label and feed the right amount by weight, no matter how cute they are. I am a disciplinarian, in that bad behavior will get them the ice cold shoulder from me.

I really, really hate it when my dogs whip themselves into a frenzy when I get home, whine and widdle and jump on my legs. (Sort of like the way I feel about everybody first thing in the morning  --  leave me the hell alone until I wake up.) My dogs frustrate me especially because it's the easiest thing in the world to teach dogs to be calm upon your arrival, without kicking them across the yard. You ignore them. Simply walk in wordlessly, do not make eye contact, hang up your purse, take off your shoes, make yourself a drink, sit down, and then call them over for some affection. As with all training the effort requires absolute consistency and the cooperation of every member of the family. Unfortunately, someone in mine just can't do it. Coming through the back gate without falling on the ground for a tickling match with the dogs is as unnatural to him as leaving a bag of tortilla chips unopened for a few days.

I do a little better with training animals, than people.

But back to the explanation, dear family. It is this: Salsa and I work together, and sometimes when you work very very closely with someone, well, things just happen.



A little goofier than usual ...

I've taken a week off from my job to devote to a little more intensive training than I could offer in normal weeks, seeking to advance her education quite a bit just before summer weather and all its expanding possibilities. Salsa has now been saddled three times and driven twice  --  with no weight on her whatsoever, of course, not for at least two more years, and with the driving reins attached to her halter, not a snaffle. I wish I could explain better for people who don't have working animals, but that's about it. She's not really a pet, she's a partner, and the magic of perfect partnership, of working like this together  --  it  feels like a beautifully choreographed dance that we are beginning to execute more effortlessly. It feels like the possibilities for our future are endless. It feels harmonic, the way music feels inside when the TV's not on, too.

And aw, you should see her sweet, pink, translucent hooves, still so babyish, with her trying so hard to put them down just so, trying so hard to please. "Here Mama? You want it here? Or here?" And you should see her little pink tongue that she sometimes sticks out like a puppy dog, because she's thinking so hard. Her goofy funny face with a few winter hairs making her jawline look all silly, and the way that she turns her slim head and tucks it under your arm, saying she thinks she deserves some extra loving. You should see ......

Oh lookit the pretty baby, pretty pretty little babykins. Sweet sweet little schnookums ......  Oops. Gotta go.

Hotter Than a Pepper Sprout

Forget “falling” and “head-over-heels.” New love that leads to the madness of marriage might better be described as a somersaulting, limbs-flailing, tandem barreling down a rocky mountain that will end in either Nirvana or Death. Drawing a little blood screams that you are alive, but in any case there’s no stopping. If you could grab a hand- or foot-hold, well of course you would, and quit making such a flapping idiot of yourself.

Doug and I were already in the tumble by about the third date, when the 40-something childless man who was definitely going to be my second husband asked, not for the first time, “So how many children do you have again?”

Four. I have four.

My significant other — an erudite PhD and Renaissance Man who explains the intricacies of cellular biology on a regular basis — held up fingers for himself.

Not long after this, serious introductions were made between my daughters and their stepfather-to-be. The girls ranged in age from between 6 and 13. He began the process of trying to memorize their names, and they began the process of getting to know this newcomer who would have such a tremendous effect on their lives. Doug and I had arranged for all of this to occur during a day-long outing to relatively neutral territory, his family’s beloved vacation house on the Pigeon River near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Tucked deep into a cool, leafy green peace, the house was a fine place for me to do a lot of hyperventilating, stricken as I was with the fear that my children might devour alive the man I loved.

After a few hours, I relaxed a little. Things were going OK. We were all eating lunch on the screened-in porch, mostly hidden by rhododendrons, talking, laughing. Being fairly normal. From our side of the screen, we could see tourists float past on the river in rented inner-tubes, causing near blindness in their new fluorescent swimsuits. Birdsong was interrupted by bursts of screaming and yelping as they hit and tipped around in easy rapids. This was great — my embryonic new family had something to dogpile on together. Stripped of even a trace of self-awareness in their unfamiliar surroundings, tourists beg to be made fun of — by local residents with real family ties to an area, and all young people, ranging in age from, say, 6 to 13.

Young people who say something like this, from oldest to youngest:

Geez. Those tubers are really stupid.

Yeah. Totally annoying.

Woof woof. Who let the dogs out?

Dumbheads   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

 

“I don’t know,” Doug said. “They are also capable of asexual reproduction. That’s pretty cool.”

No really, it made sense. Right there on our lunch plates were dollops of homemade potato salad. And a “tuber,” for the rest of us not so erudite, can also be defined as “a swollen, fleshy, usually underground stem of a plant, such as the potato, bearing buds from which new plant shoots arise.”

Sure, perfect sense. The whole big somersaulting, limbs-flailing, barreling down a rocky mountain madness of it. And six is even better than two. Totally.