Disclaimer: The names contained herein have been changed,
to protect the innocent, the very very very innocent!
They will only be lovingly referred to as:
OFFSPRING #1
and
OFFSPRING #2
Please proceed…with tender caution!
The room was half-darkened late that night as I sat dialoguing with my first-born male Offspring#1, and his female friend…
She turned to my first-born male Offspring #1 and said:
“What do you love the most about your mother?”
I froze inside.
From a 10-foot distance I locked my piercing blue eyes with the piercing blue eyes (which Offspring #1 probably genetically obtained from my father) and thought to myself, “I have no idea what he will say. It could be anything from ‘why do you assume I love her to…I have no idea…’ “
_____
It was one of those existential milliseconds when every experience I had ever had with this Offspring #1 from nursing him at my breast to vague recollections of a 13-year-old-boy going into the basement and flipping circuit breakers on and off while I was trying to work in my 2nd floor home office – being in some state of unclear intellectual and emotional space with a convergence of certain probable complex interpersonal intersection of frustrated psyches…
I recalled in that millisecond angrily shouting from the 2nd floor office and running into the basement only to find Offspring #1 laughing and walking upstairs, me flipping the breaker back on and going back to my office only to have it…you guessed it…repeat…over and over and over…
It was some type of existential-matrix-vortex of something of a Genetic Free-for-All-I Don’t- Know -What…
The father of Offspring #1 used to say, “he is just like you.”
_____
In that milli-second of locked eyeballs with 29-year-old Offspring #1, I could see all kinds of stuff.
I saw a flash of something I’m having trouble finding the right word to describe…he paused slightly and I saw a micro-expression of something else on his face…I don’t know…was it a smirk or something more tender?
I have no idea.
But, he casually stated:
“She’s crazy.”
Well. That about sums it up.
Maybe.
In the least, that is one way to look at things.
_____
So there.
You have the short answer to my question of WHAT KIND OF MOTHER ARE YOU, ANYWAYS!!!!!
CRAY CRAY.
I AM A CRAY CRAY MOTHER.
AND DOGGONE PROUD OF IT.
I mean, all things considered, that is quite an accomplishment.
It takes a lot of dilligence to be so cray cray of a mother.
And the reward is…you guessed it…cray cray children!!
The photograph below, taken one Easter Sunday morning by their father, during a very difficult time in the life of our family, belies the level of internal strategies of cray cray which would soon be deployed as these two young boys, and myself, continued to grow together.
I mean…I mean I mean...I just wasn’t given a very good maternal model and especially, as every mother knows, the Zygotes do not come with any clear instructions or User Friendly Guidebook.
At times, they can be like clocks you think you are winding up but they just don’t tick right.
The only person ticking is YOU.
Tic – tic – tic – tic – TIC!!!!!
Emotional, convulsing tics!!!!!
Where is the head-banging emoji when you need it?
I think I went into my first marriage – which I had hoped and planned to be in for life – secretly hoping for a brood of children, while knowing that my soon-to-be-husband was a bit unsure about fatherhood, if ever.
Once it came, he loved those little Zygotes quite a bit.
For various reasons after conceiving, carrying and birthing Offspring #1, I think we had some questions about whether we should stop.
I seemed to have a rough time emotionally with pregnancy, it just didn’t seem to hormonally sit well in my stomach, I suppose…
No, seriously, probably a confluence of personal struggles I was dealing with at the time – things with my own mother, things in the marriage, a first-ever deep grieving over my father’s death 10 years prior, a baby due around the date of his death in May…among other things. Hormones, post-partum…genetic intensity…all unclear.
But, after going through a rough patch of about 3-4 years, I seemed to rebound. Prior to that I was exceedingly high functioning and emotionally normal (whatever that even means) – though always very intense – considering all I had survived, and was surviving, thus far.
So, eventually I (we, of course) decided I wanted to have another – Offspring #2! Having been an Only Offspring myself which would account for at least part, of my weirdities – I rationalized and definitely emotitized pursuit of said Zygote. I didn’t want to have an Only Zygote because – that’s like, no fun?
I just could not conceive what might lay ahead – little did I know in that moment the future would unfold as possibly, some strange East of Eden II-like novel and 27 years later I would feel so devastated I would feel like writing and partaking in a weird and painfully terrible maternal poetry slam – with maternal emo expressions from distresses with this precious, brown-eyed, now re-differentiating Zygote.
Because…like…I can mimic you, too.
Although, Shakespeare Hates Your Emo Everything.
The worst part about emo writings, is, there are, no rules…and, no right or, wrong, punctuation.
It must be read with, um…like…uptalk?, and, um, like…creaky voice inflections?
It is just sooooooo very, very, very….WRONG.
Offspring #2 made his – and/or her – entrance into this world in quite a dramatic fashion.
Twenty-seven years later this Offspring #2 would send me a message reading something along the lines of, “When you gave birth to me and your soul left your body and entered the spiritual realm of ancestors to grab my soul – what was this experience like?”
I read the text not knowing whether to laugh, cry, shake, keel over or, God forbid,ANSWER THAT QUESTION.
I mean…my first response was my go-to (comedy)…because…
…THAT’S WHAT KIND OF MOTHER I AM, ANYWAYS!!!!!
I considered the terse answer: I’m sorry. I have no recollection of my soul exiting my body and traveling up with your dead ancestors and grabbing you soul. None. Zilch. Nada. But, I do recall screaming for an epidural.
Oh, wait, that was with Offspring #1.
As I said, Offspring #2 had a number of things in mind concerning his or her grand entrance!
_____
After my maternal failure at all-natural childbirth with Offspring #1 – I was determined on the next round to achieve this Nirvana Experience of Motherhood.
I would be like the Goddess Athena giving birth to Zeus (although me and the Offspring’s Conceiver were secretly hoping for…Zeusette).
***OK OK…in proofing this I Googled Zeus/Athena…this is all wrong..so so wrong…Athena came from Zeus and Zeus came from…Oh never mind…just picture another being popping out of someone’s head…that’s what I meant, ha ha***
Offspring #2’s expected grand entrance was so close to the winter solstice which is celebrated as the 2nd highest Holy Day on the liturgical calendar of the Christian Faith. So, while the intended name was to be biblical meaning “God’s gift” – if this gift turned out to be female and born on Christmas Day, the name would have been, perhaps, “Natalie.”
But, we didn’t follow any liturgical calendar – instead, we were part of a slightly bizarre family of independent Christians who seemingly had direct communications with God Himself, in the Person of Jesus Christ (Gotta LOVE HIM, and I DO!!! I mean….I DO…more than any “I DO’s” I’ve ever confessed in whatever credal form taken!)
I mean it was almost like…um…Alice’s Restaurant? Almost.
We were fellowshipping with kinfolk that rejected sugar as from the hand of the devil himself, where women nursed them babies together in the Pastor’s office while listening to the sermon via speaker system…we were all sharing each other’s maternity clothes in a communal clothes closet because…most of us…were very frugal if not downright poverty-stricken…we were all jamming and dancing together (very modestly of course, not like King David, THAT would be indecent and disgraceful, especially for us women folk) to heavy Hebrew-laden guitar rhythms…in between breast-feeding and making sure our ta ta’s weren’t bouncing so much we might cause a man to stumble we were doing the Horrah while people fell down on the floor and prayed in unknown languages…and…and…it was actually, quite amazing.
To everything there is a season…I took away some very lovely flowers to add into my ecclectic bouquet of Christian experiences…
Confusing at times, but…it was what it was and I suppose, after all the drama of my own upbringing, I simply needed that.
It was in this context that Offspring #2 made their secretly-unknown-to-all-others-not-so-gender-specific arrival.
_____
So we were having ourselves Agape love feasts and breaking bread from house to house – especially bypassing clergy who are “of the bishops” (we were only “of the elders”) who might find themselves horrified at sheep thinking they might break bread and share wine in the privacy of their own homes – unlike “some” of the early Church who, under the right circumstances, might charge a small sum not only for performance of rites and dispensation of pennance – thus liberating the sheep divided by the great gulf from purgatory!
And this, too, in all honesty, was equally amazing and something I treasure as much as I now treasure listening to the intentional liturgy of a sanctioned priest, who makes sure that no metaphorical – or possibly even transubstantiated – morsel of our dear Lord and Savior’s body nor His blood might go to waste but when finished, performs the additional rite of draining that beautiful, beautiful sacred cup – and hoping for the best – as they exit the sanctuary followed the deeply reverent parade of the cross, having put a sacred gold-plated Holy Scriptures containing both New and Old Testaments (with pews of Bibles containing the Apocrapha for added interest), and be able to clearly proclaim, after draining The Cup,”Go in peace, and serve the Lord” while beautiful bells are announcing the salvation found in the Christ.
_____
But I can’t forget how in those days when our Offsprings arrived….we were all naming our quiverfull of arrows with profound biblical intention.
Offspring #1’s given name means “God has remembered”
and
Offspring #2’s given name means “God’s gift”
Given that God’s gift was now, twenty-seven years later – asking me a most unusual question to which the answer “I’m not even sure what this means” would win, hands down, on Jeopardy, I rolled this around in my mind.
Like, who wouldn’t know that the answer “I ‘m not even sure what this means” might pair so well with the question, “What was it like for your soul to exit your body during childbirth and enter into the spiritual realm of dead ancestors and grab my soul?”
You know, that actually sounds like the experience of a woman given peyote during childbirth rather than being shot up with oxitocin through a mainline and given magnesium sulfate alongside this drug, and, let’s not forget, the wham-bamming epidural to help achieve this maternal nirvana…of course, it’s all fun and nirvana until they turn it off because somewhere in the space time continuum, Offspring #2 and of course, his not-so-godlike-mother are up against some 10 centimter space and decide, together, that pushing is needed…lots and lots of harder pushing…because there just ain’t no polite door bell to ring for this grand entrance!
Since Offspring #1 had decided to wrap a cord around his neck and turn blue in order to lose just a few braincells so he might better adjust to this planet…having the mother-god falsely believing that pushing would be easy-peasy yet finding out after the really strong not-so-hempy-laden epidural was secretly shut off (ha ha we gotcha there…you really really need to feel this pain to make it end!) that after nearly two hours baby was getting distressed.
The not-so-nirvana-like-mother-god was ready to stand up and find some proverbial towel so that she could “throw that towel in somewhere…”
It took two nurses on each side to push while the doc covering for the doc on vacay (because this was like…a holiday weekend…) was using some medieval tong-like device to assist the pushers…but gratefully…everything turned out A-OK.
I mean, relatively speaking.
Offspring #2 broke some unspoken rule of Zuess and/or Zuessette birth from the beginning.
First, they decide the party should happen in the middle of historical low temps and massive ice storms.
Yeah, because that would add just a bit more amazing drama!
The god-mom was sitting round table during one of those homegroup love feasts and discussion and meekly raised hand and said, um, “I think I might be in labor….”
Fast forward, this was no labor but instead, severe pain in liver on top of abdomen (for medical people…HELPS Syndrome) which had no timing, no rhythm…just one long, constant sustain…
After a couple hours of hot baths and walking and pain, the Zuessy-Zuessette-birthing-god-woman went from midwife to ER accompanied by the Conceiver and another friend, essentially acting as a doula.
Jeepers…180/120 BP…we gotta get this offspring OUT!!! Before you start convulsing and everyone involved meets their Maker!
This beautiful brown-eyed-like-his-father baby boy was handed to mom, all swaddled, about 24 hours later when she arrived in her own private room.
The Zuess-Zuesette-birther-not-so-godlike-mom held them and stared into their eyes and being grateful to the Creator, thought she heard some still, small voice telling her, “this one is not like the other one.”
(in all seriousness, this actually happened when I first held him alone…)
She was unsure what this meant but thought she sensed maybe he would be more athletic – a football player perhaps – something kinda different from Offspring #1. I mean, he already had several ounces more on him at birth – crossing over the 9 pound marker – and he had such a peaceful spirit and chubby little face!
Days later this event took a curtain call performance when mom-god ended back in the ER with complications.
Next day the female doctor who caught Offspring #2 came into the room and tried to have a rational conversation with mama who had gone from having her milk arrive at home the night before to frantically spending all morning pumping enough milk to satisfy the baby cows on all of God’s thousand hills…
This woman said “I think ya got enough milk there but we are going to have to bring the baby in – this is very very serious. You have Group B strep in your blood.”
The god-woman, retrospectively lamenting there was no tye-dyed hospital hippie gown was shocked!
“You mean I have Groupie Strep in my BLOOD? OMG how did THAT get there?!! It’s been years since I (never really) imagined myself following around the Grateful Dead.”
(seriously, I didn’t understand what the obstetrician was trying to say to me…I thought she said “groupie strep” because I had never heard the term Group B strep before…this can be a common and deadly form of septicimia following complicated deliveries)
The woman talked sternly to the dazed mama as she was wishing she might dip cookies into one of the milk bottles, saying loudly, “NOT GROUPIE STREP, but GROUP B STREP!”
Right then an attendant came in with an awesome take-in lunch of jello and other unknown substances stating, “We got the best cooks here – they are moonlighting from ALICE’S RESTAURANT.”
With that, the mom-god-bearer took a bite of jello and started humming, “Nice. Apparently, you CAN have anything you want…at Alice’s Restaurant!”
Because…she would like…embellish this story quite a bit years and years later…
Because THAT’S WHAT KIND OF A MOTHER SHE IS, ANYWAYS!!!!!
Before long mom and Offspring #2 were A-OK, too, and were home and Offspring #2 was put into the guarded arms of Offspring #1, who just happened to be wearing a hand-made paper crown at the time… because, he was…like…some kind of KING???
I love it!!!
And, I love them both.
With this I think I will end Part I…because there are just too many other stories in my head right now to give this the time it really needs…who knows whether I can eventually continue with Part II and more…
So grateful for these two gifts of life, despite any other difficulties.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Allison Woodward’s poem
“God Our Mother”
captures the raw spiritual reality
and divine manifestation mothers are:
To be a Mother is to suffer;
To travail in the dark,
stretched and torn,
exposed in half-naked humiliation,
subjected to indignities
for the sake of new life.
To be a Mother is to say,
“This is my body, broken for you,”
And, in the next instant, in response to the created’s primal hunger,
“This is my body, take and eat.”
To be a Mother is to self-empty,
To neither slumber nor sleep,
so attuned You are to cries in the night—
Offering the comfort of Yourself,
and assurances of “I’m here.”
To be a Mother is to weep
over the fighting and exclusions and wounds
your children inflict on one another;
To long for reconciliation and brotherly love
and—when all is said and done—
To gather all parties, the offender and the offended,
into the folds of your embrace
and to whisper in their ears
that they are Beloved.
To be a mother is to be vulnerable—
To be misunderstood,
Railed against,
Blamed
For the heartaches of the bewildered children
who don’t know where else to cast
the angst they feel
over their own existence
in this perplexing universe
To be a mother is to hoist onto your hips those on whom your image is imprinted,
bearing the burden of their weight,
rejoicing in their returned affection,
delighting in their wonder,
bleeding in the presence of their pain.
To be a mother is to be accused of sentimentality one moment,
And injustice the next.
To be the Receiver of endless demands,
Absorber of perpetual complaints,
Reckoner of bottomless needs.
To be a mother is to be an artist;
A keeper of memories past,
Weaver of stories untold,
Visionary of lives looming ahead.
To be a mother is to be the first voice listened to,
And the first disregarded;
To be a Mender of broken creations,
And Comforter of the distraught children
whose hands wrought them.
To be a mother is to be a Touchstone
and the Source,
Bestower of names,
Influencer of identities;
Life giver,
Life shaper,
Empath,
Healer,
and
Original Love.
Allison Woodward’s poem was written for The Liturgists podcast, God Our Mother.
On ChildrenKahlil Gibran – 1883-1931
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that
His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Thank You For Reading
Please Feel Free To Express Your Thoughts Below
Thank You For Reading
Please Feel Free To Express Your Thoughts Below
