little body rolls over beside me, little sigh escaping. little hands crawl up around my neck, hooking under my chin. it is here that i realize that i am this little man's whole world and he is ensuring even in sleep that i know to whom i belong. i pretend to be a grown-up at times, stealing moments away to have coffee with a girlfriend, or putting on a dvd to get some quiet alone time with my husband in another room. but i still have to sneak out of the house because there does not exist in time a moment when it is reasonable for mama to leave and every single intimate encouter is repeatedly and unfailingly interrupted. i am after all, a mother. my life does not belong to me. i am the caretaker for another's existence. i live that he might live. i breathe that he might breathe. i eat that he might eat. and it is true also that i sleep only that he might sleep. so the rising and falling of breath beside me is my reason to exist. and this is only true for me, no other. papa can walk out the door and be called after, "go to school!" i on the other hand must be phoned by cell to sing "old macdonald" while sitting on the floor of linens-n-things examining 400 thread count indian cotton king-sized bedsheets. old macdonald had some jersey knit, ee i ee i o. it is a demanding position, to be sure. but how often are we told and shown so assuredly our place in life? i know this absolutely to be true - that i am here so that my children are here. it is not told to me just by little hands hooked around my chin, or little arms in a death grip around my leg. it is told to me by the joints and muscles in my hips and pelvis, aching as they are under the weight of the fruit of my womb. it is told to me by my leaking breasts, waiting to nourish. it is told to me by the linea negra, arching it's way up my belly, however faint this go around. it is told to me by feet in my ribs both inside and out. it is being kicked and screamed into me, forced into me by a willful, currently with cold and horribly stinky sick-breath toddler who has now climbed from our 250 thread count nest into my arms where he picks his nose and waits to be fully awake that he might continue to make it clear to me how much i am the necessary component in his continued existence.

experience has led to my self-doubt. while pregnant for the first time with aleksander in 2002, i was confident in my ability to mother. i was, in fact, quite relaxed about the possibilities that lay ahead of me. i knew that mothering was difficult, but that you survive and your kids turn out fine. i knew that you were going to screw up somehow, but that being mindful could aid in not screwing up too terribly. it has taken two-and-a-half years of actual mothering to turn that confidence into an aching apprehension that runs quite deep and colors my every move, it seems. there is now forever the question in my head of, "am i doing this right?" resulting of course in the ultimate, "is my son normal?" it's not that i've failed so miserably thus far that has led to all this doubt, either. it is in fact the difficulty of it having led to the reaching out for similar stories from similar voices - for a place to belong. now i've heard every horror story imaginable and i've witnessed mothers grieving behaviors of their own that i've been guilty of more times than i can count. i've now had incredible self-righteousness about how it's supposed to be done (whatever that is) drive stakes of fear into me, deep enough to leave me with the question about the future of how will i possibly cope with two children and left me forever wondering how it is you mother a newborn exactly because suddenly i am struck dumb by my self-doubt and cannot fathom what it is that you do, how it works, when once i seemed so sure. will i regain confidence enough to mother a newborn? i'm certain it will come and we will survive, but the mother guilt will always be there, coming at me from within and without since parenting is so deeply personal and yet so incredibly social. everyone has an opinion on the matter, and they are never enough to reassure me that everything will be all right and that my children are in fact normal, yet a little bit wild, a little bit difficult. it would be nice to have pity taken on me for once rather than an accusatory eye aimed my way, a pointing finger telling me that i'm doing it all wrong but giving only impratical solutions at best. i am in a constant battle with external notions of parenting advice, poised against the internal knowledge that following my son's lead is enough. will i ever rest? can the guilt ever be assuaged? my self-doubt eased? more importantly, will all the authors of advice ever learn to shut the fuck up?

the emotional aspects of the accidental. as things have slowly returned to a state resembling normalcy, i am continually curious about the concurrent state of my well-being and if it really is just fine, as it appears on the surface to be. for the most part, yes, i am fine. i am back in the groove of washing and picking up and shopping and balancing and baking and all the things that my home life require, including a little twice-weekly chiropractic thrown in for good measure. aside from that, i have pulled away from cleveland life, have refused to rejoin the mommy's groups, have not gone to the meetings that my second trimester burst of energy had me running all over town to. and it's the running all over town part that is perhaps the main motivation for my becoming a bit of a hermit. several of the meetings that i might regularly attend are way the hell out, way the hell far away, and more significantly, require or nearly require highway travel, much of it at night, alone, on or near the same highway that the truck careened off of and smashed my bitty car. i have absolutely no desire to revisit the location of my trauma. i subsequently have not one bit of urge to become again the little joiner that i was in recent months. in fact, i find myself holding a grudge against all of cleveland for the unlikely event. we were set to leave from here in approximately a year and a half or so as it was, and i am all prepared for that year and a half to be over sooner rather than later. i am fully prepared for the squashing of time that i might escape this city that tosses it's long haul vehicles over the edges of bridges. i know fully, even while driving, that i am not likely to have another truck fall on me. yet of course i think of cars running red lights and slamming into my side and cars stopping short and skidding into my rear end. but i have always thought of those things. it just seems to be a bit intensified these days, despite the fact that i am confident while driving, that i occassionally rush a bit and get troubled by people going slow in front of me, muttering profanities under my breath as i have always done, even long before the accident. these days i am feeling well on the road. there is no sudden attack of panic, no overwhelming, jaw-clenching fear (notwithstanding tmj) as i make my way on the city streets. i have even on occassion felt that highway travel is within my capabilities, though i haven't yet had a reason to accomplish it. and yet still i do not want to return to the area shown in the early morning hours on every local news channel, that expanse of intersecting and bisecting interstates, cradling the industrial complex below. when i picture it, i see it as the image from the televisions, the image that i remember - the orange glow of street lamps, smokestacks belching in the background, snow still piled in the shoulder lanes, all under the veil of night or early morning darkness. and it is that image that holds me home, without consuming fear, just a constant state of unease, the feeling that i must not go there.

the unexpected and the unfathomable comes careening over edges in slow motion, yet the blink of an eye, and all is forever changed and any security that i had, any illusion of preparedness is forever challenged by this, the unthinkable: the semi truck crashing through space, sparks flying from its body and me below, driving alone late at night on the highway; and me below, wondering and staring and trying to figure in the splittings of seconds what the fuck that is. and the subsequent bracing for impact - the foot slamming on the brakes, the head crouched in between shoulders, raised up to meet ears, the body tense, arms locked, all tilted ever so slightly to the right - and impact. the noises i imagine are all fiction - i cannot remember. it is a tunnel either of noise or of silence - the sounds i've invented of crushing metal and glass and skidding truck-trailer along concrete and asphalt, or the hollow echoes of my brain thumping in my head, everything too loud for sound, just the feeling of the roof caving and hitting my head and the sight of the sparks and the shattered glass and twisted metal, the darkness enveloping me as the diesel fuel tanks explode splashing amber fluid all over the suddenly million-pieced windshield, now half hanging out the car, on the hood, the door and roof all slanted down to the ground and i am there, as we are skidding to a halt, waiting simply for death. and then we stop. and there really is silence and i reach out in the darkness of my smashed car for my cell phone wherever it was and dial immediately my husband and the words come in screams, "i have been in an accident, a semi fell on my car, i am trapped in the car, i think i smell fumes." all that sent through space whizzing across town to his ear, wherever it is that he sits with my son, who is up very late playing as usual. there is no way for me to know what he was thinking in that moment, how it touched him, whether it caved in his chest or made his skin go cold, but he tells me to calm down and try to find a way out of the car. i frantically press the lap belt release button over and over in panicked movements, realize that it's not the lap belt, but the shoulder belt stretched across my legs, pinning me to my seat, and still on the phone, still panicked, still rushing, reach down and slide the seat back and try again to lift my legs, but there is no room, not enough slack, and i calm for a moment, enough to reach outside the car, through the hole where my door used to be, down and underneath the crushed roof beside my head and find very carefully the shoulder strap release button and manage to press it and it lets go and there is momentary relief in me as i crawl into the passenger seat and inform jon of my escape. but i am still smelling fumes and i am waiting any second for the truck beside me to explode just as it does in the movies after it falls from the sky. i reach over and turn off my car and pull out my keys and stick them in my pocket. i grab my purse and i try to get the passenger side door open, again panicking. it doesn't open, so i unlock it, and it still doesn't open and i look back between the seats and see cars stopped on the road behind me and a pickup truck, one of those monstrous things, comes forward and i try to reach my tiny hand through a hole between the roof and the door, to wave and i scream "help me" in a terrified, horror-film howl, and he drives past and i bang on the window as i am giving jon a running narrative of what is going on. again i look back through the front seats out the rear window and i see someone standing in the road, hand to ear, presumably dialing 911, and i try again to reach in the hole in the roof to wave and i scream again for help and they stand unmoving, and i tell jon that they can't hear me. i realized when looking between the seats that i couldn't fit through due to the crushed roof and the bulk of my son's car seat, so i reach down and recline the passenger seat back down to it's furthest and try opening the rear passenger-side door, then unlock it, all frantic, still waiting for the explosion, for my fiery death, then open it and crawl out of the wreckage and tell jon that i am out and that i will call 911 since he had asked me why i had called him instead of 911 while i was still stuck within. the truth is that if i was about to die, as i expected, then the person i needed most to talk to was jon. when i am alone and when i am scared, i am aching for my other half and that is him. when i need to reach out of the darkness and touch something to pull me home, it is him. if i have nothing else, i cannot live without my husband. outside, in the cold, on the highway, dialing 911, i walk hurriedly away from the car, wanting to get away in the case of sudden fire, though becoming more sure that it will not happen, i approach the man on the phone and he asks, "is there anyone in the vehicle?" and i do not understand what he means because clearly i am no longer in the vehicle, i am on the side of the highway, standing in the shoulder, in the snow, out of fear that a car will not stop soon enough before the backup and will send a car flying down the highway to kill me who has just evaded death twice already. and a bored, man's voice comes through on the phone and i say where i am and what has happened and he says, "ambulance, fire or police?" and i say, "yes." then he says, "what city?" and i say again where i am and in the same bored tone he says, "what city?" and i say "i don't know what city!" because i don't know which exact suburb i am in and he repeats again like some robot, "what city?" and i am still not understanding and say, "what?!?" and again like a recording he says, "what city?" and finally i scream, "cleveland, ohio!!!" and the phone begins to transfer and ring again and the man on the highway says to me again, "is there anyone in the vehicle?" and finally i say, "no - i don't know about the guy in the semi." and a woman has answered the ring and says, "cleveland police" and i tell her where i am and what has happened and the man is still asking me questions and she says, "did the truck flip?" and i say, emphatic, needing that she understand what ridiculous, unheard of thing has occurred here, needing that the people on the phone come to realize just what an emergency this is, "a semi flew through the air and landed on top of me." she says, "okay, we'll get the police right out there." and i thank her, again emphatic. the man asks if i am okay and i am not certain if i answer, but i know that i am thinking, "fuck no - a semi just flew through the air and landed on my car!" i tell him at some point that i am pregnant, thinking that this needs to be known for whatever reason, thinking that this unbelievable event should have especially not happened to me given my fragile state. then, not knowing what to do with myself, i begin to sob and scream there on the side of the highway and i turn around and around looking for someplace to be, something to lean on and for a moment as i am howling, i look over the industrial complex that is the center of all the intersecting highways in cleveland and wonder where the fire is that spits from the smokestack periodically, and i notice and feel for a second the night and the cold and the stillness of one in the morning. then the semi-truck driver comes out of the wreckage, holding his bleeding head and i wander away from him as my phone has rung with my friend sarah on the line drunkenly wondering about coming to get me. then the cops arrive and the man on the highway tells them i was in the car and that i am pregnant and they stare at me in disbelief and ask, "you were in that car?" and i say, "yeah" with a big valley-girl lift at the end as though to say, "but i'm not anymore you dimwit!" and they ask, "are you okay?" and to the one cop addressing me i say, "no! i am freaked the fuck out!" and he leads me to his cruiser to sit down and everyone who sees me can't believe that i wasn't dead or bleeding or hurt even and i crack jokes with the emts to calm myself, and i talk on the phone to jon and my mom and get strapped to a board and driven in a fire truck to the hospital, where i stay for 15 hours, having ultrasound and doppler use galore to ensure that my placenta remained intact and that the baby kicked and moved as it should. in the days that followed, i became the center of a media blitz that culminated in appearances on both good morning america and the today show, and a call from the folks at oprah that will theoretically result in a show sometime this spring. normal life seems to have resumed for the most part and i am healing and baby is fine, kicking, growing, unaware in her oceany home...

having known, knowing nothing. a concern is rising in me for the months coming at me and the transformation i am making from the mother of one to the mother of two. i find myself unable to recall what it was like to mother a newborn. all i can remember is that it was hard. it is as though there is a dance i did whose steps are now buried some place in my brain that i cannot access. i reassure myself that once the time comes again, i will remember and the dance will seem a familiar one that i simply hadn't done in awhile. and of course this will not be the same as it was at all. this will all be new, for it is a new person that i am bringing into the world, not simply another aleksander. and even as i make this transition to new mother, my son is transforming before me into a child and that too is unfamiliar. once so confident as i had figured all this mothering stuff out, i am being newly challenged everyday. it is so confusing to me. he is changing and i am trying to view with some sort of knowing objectivity with which i can gauge whether behaviors are normal or unusual, and then if normal, if normal only for my child, thereby atypical for his developmental stage, or normal for most or nearly all two-year-olds. the whole process is confounding. first, how do i have a knowing objectivity? how do i release myself from my emotional involvement enough to view him, to see behaviors for what they are and not just as an annoyance to me? it is a tricky process. another dance that i am learning. and so i find myself so unprepared for juggling all these transitions at once and having an understanding of my place and my children and my family and our goals and my life. i am changing by the changes around me. i am adapting and if i think carefully about it, if i begin to consider the unknown, it becomes terrifying. it becomes a cliff whose edge i am walking and about to jump off to see if i can fly - the depths are so dizzying, how will i survive? by surviving. and yet - this is motherhood not some extreme sport! how can i simply survive it? musn't i savor it? my children will only be this young once, musn't i appreciate each inch of them, each fold of fat and every precious moment? i believe that expectation to be a little high for my taste - for my memory of the colicky, spitting up, sleepless mess that was the early months of aleksander's life. my memory of that time is not always so rosy that i can swoon at the thought of babies. and yet i do, i have. it's how i ended up on this precipice to begin with. and as scary as it seems, i do believe that i can, and will, fly.

week 21

ultrasound on friday. out of the darkness and out of the blur, came the strangely familiar. at first a head and some bone and a beating heart inside it's chest, hands and feet, legs and arms, and lastly a nose and lip - complete, not broken, soft, and perfect, ripe fruit for what it is i've lacked. and then i felt so happy. there is no eloquent way of putting the elation, the relief. there is no way to say more simply, more clearly, how happy we were and are to discover our experiments have worked, that what we sought to do is being done. our child will be born whole and perfect. we are so grateful. and i am so looking forward to heal what i'd lost. i am looking forward to the opportunity to nurse. there is nothing more to say but that i am ecstatic.

week 19

Aleks blowing zerberts on the baby

the middle path. in considering unassisted childbirth, by which i mean giving birth by myself without the assistance of a birth attendant aside from perhaps my husband, i find myself caught between two opposing viewpoints, each pressuring me to conform. on the one hand is the notion that there is a danger inherent in childbirth and that having no assistance risks being unprepared for or unaware of something going wrong. on the other hand, it is not radical enough to merely consider, or to have a backup plan or to believe in the benefit of assistance. truthfully, either side should be supporting what i know to be true about myself and should support my intuition in either circumstance, calling for either need - the space to be alone or the need for support. which is why i have chosen a middle path wherein i have both a support person on call and the option to not call them. and even the option to call after having already felt the need not to - the option to change my mind. and yet - i go and i read the viewpoints of one side and feel wholly inadequate for trusting my own intuition, or for providing for the unknown, as though it could somehow jinx me despite my belief in support as an option and not a cop-out. the truth of what i will need i cannot begin to predict. i cannot know the path before i walk it. it will reveal itself and i will reveal myself in the process. i will learn the truth of what a moment calls for, but it will not be this moment, it will be that one. there is no way to prepare or to predict. the same goes with all matters of parenting and of mothering. i am for instance, scared to death in part, of what nursing will be like as i've never done it before, but only pumped breastmilk electronically for thirteen months. i am scared that i will have trouble, that it will hurt dramatically, that i don't know proper holds or latching techniques. i have cause in my past to fear this. there is doubt buried in my history from the guilt of aleksander's defect and the terrible lack of a nursing relationship between us. i cannot help that. though it was impossible for him to nurse, there will always be the question in my mind that perhaps i simply did not try hard enough. even though i have forgiven myself and made my peace with that aspect of our relationship, a former me asked it and it will hang forever now in my memory. and so i seek out ways to have resources for the support that i could potentially need despite my strong familial support and my intense committment and my personal desire to breastfeed. there may be trouble nontheless and i believe that it is in my best interest to know ahead of time where i can go to for outside support or instruction when it may be what i need. and does this belief in the skill and knowledge of others betray a doubting of my own abilities and the potentiality of my biology? in understanding and appreciating the misgivings of biology and the potential complications of breastfeeding, is it really a vote of no confidence cast for my qualification as a breeder? does the fear that i've already admitted to really say that i ultimately believe that i am built incapable, that i would be hard-pressed to figure it out without the assistance of experts? is that what i'm inferring between the lines? an inherent self-doubt in my own faculties? or can i be confident yet cautious? is that possible? or is the superstition of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, of setting myself up for failure more accurate? fuck that. i believe whole-heartedly in my ability, and yet at moments i waiver for whatever reason and am unwilling to struggle at length simply to prove myself some master of instinct, some champion of biology, the ultimate mother. i will do what the situation calls for and fall for neither a machismo independence nor a weakling dependency. i am, after all, what i am.

week 18

a different view:

week 17

i am a birth junkie. as soon as i gave birth the first time, i was hooked. i read tons of books, always wanted to chat with pregnant moms (not that i come across them too often), love birth stories, etc. when we decided to try to conceive a second, i looked forward to being in it again, thinking that somehow it would be different than my first pregnancy.

and now i'm here and in a lot of ways it is different than my first pregnancy, but in a lot of ways, especially the emotional aspect, it's the same. i wouldn't say that i'm feeling depressed per se, but something feels sorta off.

when i would talk to moms-to-be while not pregnant, i would always want to hear about the truth of what they were going through, but it's really not what pregnant people talk about because it's generally not what people want to hear. people don't want to talk about the enormous change that you're undergoing - how it's changing your life and how you feel about it. people want to talk about names and sexes and ultrasounds and all the stuff that we preggos talk about. but i just feel there's something else here, underlying everything. it was there the last time and it's here again.

the truth is that i'm terrified of having two children. i'm worried about everything that could go wrong with the new baby. and i wish so badly that there was some way for our culture to recognize this enormous change that we are going through - before i'm 7 or 8 months along and am thrown a baby shower (or in some rare instances, a mother blessing ceremony of some sort).

there's something intensly intimate happening here. i look for my belly button to pop out and search for my linea negra and that feels real to me. that feels like the truth because it's about the physical evidence of my changing in a way that not fitting into my pre-pregnancy jeans is not.

i want so badly to understand how i feel about being pregnant. i have so many conflicting crazy emotions and yet i feel i have nothing to say about what i'm going through. i feel ironically paralyzed to describe or to understand or to have the language for the profound change and growth that i am undergoing. when i go out in public, or begin to think about me and my pregnancy in a public realm, i feel that it's discounted to a level of normalcy it does not deserve. i'm certain that it doesn't help that i'm a stay-at-home mom to begin with, so feel generally undervalued and invalidated as it is.

part of the emotion i cannot name or describe, that itch, that nagging in my brain, could be the baby itself - there growing inside of me, an individual. there's also a lot of it that's just about me. how i'm changing. how i'm growing. i have to encompass another person, another soul, if you will, and how does one really do that without being a god of some sort? how can i be bigger than myself? that's what this is. that's what i struggle with. learning somehow to grow outside my borders and finding myself irrevocably changed on the other side. what is that? it can only be spiritual. i am drawing up the energy of the world and it is more than me, yet i am so small. it's just too much to understand. the earth and the universe are tumbling around inside me and beyond me and somehow i swallow it and grow and grow and grow, yet can never fit everything. i am growing beyond myself somehow, yet coming back, overflowing who i am... it's like when the universe sprang out of visnu's navel. that's who i am - visnu lying on the bed of the cosmic sea...

week 16

week 15
i'm getting much bigger...

i've become so very festive. i decked out the mantle and the front porch with garlands. i've been burning christmas-scented candles every night, though normally i'm not much of a candle-burner and aleksander wants to blow them all out anyway. i'm feeling so very sentimental about the holidays, even though we're atheists. i can't help but love family and warmth brought indoors during the winter. i can't help but adore the magic of transforming a time so desolate and dark into a time full of life and light. the juxtaposition is essential for me. it will get me through the winter, and is, i think, even more essential now due to my highly emotional and volatile state. but regardless, i have gone a bit nuts. a friend's mother embroidered a stocking for aleksander a couple of years ago, and when i pulled out the holiday box, i discovered that it was the only stocking we had. so i went out and bought three more (one extra for the new baby) and embroidered jon and i's names on two of them. i also got the aforementioned christmas-scented candles. i did what is so appropriate for american's to do at this time of year - i spent lots of money for almost no reason at all. unfortunately, it did make me feel better. the tree, we saw earlier, here's the mantle...

our christmas decorations (what few there are) are in a box with accroutements of all the other holidays, so aleks was a christmas bunny:

at times my inadequacies are immense; the reach of my insecurities vast. and i know not how to quiet the voice inside of me, the ache for more than i am, for more than i have or perhaps even need. how do i quell the hunger for an image? how do i remind myself again that i do the best that i can, that we all do, that no one is perfect and few even really pretend to be? how do i tell myself that who i am is enough; that what i do is good, valuable, adequate? why can i not feel at every moment my own worth and know unquestioningly that the path i am on is the right one? or why can i not simply consider the alternatives without digging holes in my heart in the process? why can i not consider without judging? is it simply the language of our brains? must we categorize every tiny thing to be either good or bad, right or wrong, like us or different? are we not designed for nuance, for subtlety? because all i see in the world are people doing something more right than i do it. all i come away from any situation with is self-judgement, or conversely, superiority, and truthfully i'd rather feel neither as they leave me so empty, so void of value. i'm sick of feeling like i don't measure up to some impossible standard. more aptly, i'm sick of the impossible standards that i set for myself. where does it come from? what purpose does it serve? i want only for my children to not feel this, to know themselves worthy of love and confident in their choices. i want them truly to know themselves and to not second-guess everything at every turn of all the corners. it is exhausting to feel the weight of all that i am not so consistently. i am ready to be done with it. i am ready to be who i am without question and without fear.

more christmas craftiness... hat, more hat, and rearview. bag and bag back. my fabulous windchime. another view. and another.

week 14 this is what a crazy lady looks like:

psycho pregnant lady. qu’est que c’est? this is not how this was supposed to be going. there was a picture in my head of the ideal - the contented, glowing me, patiently guiding my two-year old through activities, but instead i do nothing and want nothing to do and am impatient and tired and aching. and today, as he limps around the house and we contemplate a trip to the emergency room, i am frantically packing for the weekend away and trying to distract him as he unpacks the suitcase and demands the tube of toothpaste and whatever else might catch his eye. as he crawls on hands and knees, one foot stuck out to avoid applying excess pressure, i try to be calm, gentle, the zen-mother, but instead say "no" five hundred times and become exasperated, nauseous and want only to lay down, to sleep. the pacifier has broken at the same time as possibly his foot and we are dealing with the absence of it, the unexpected weaning from it. i am relying on jon to be the parent that i cannot. i am not sure that it is working. is he really looking to me to instruct, to complete the task? must i always be on top of everything? it is just this moment of hurrying to get ready, i think. it is just right now. it will pass. but did i mention yet that i am tired? that i am ready and waiting to do absolutely nothing? will that day ever come?

how to break a foot: