One Month Postpartum
At this point, the blog has become a LiveJournal of thoughts on new motherhood seeing’s how I have spent absolutely none of this past month making one scrid of artwork. (No surprise there says all the moms in the audience). Speaking of which, I just Googled “LiveJournal” out of curiosity to see if it’s still a working site (and to make sure I spelled it, spaced it, uppercased it correctly) and lo and behold it is! Shame on me for ever getting sheepish over my written word here when to my horror my written words from high school still float around on the world wide web eternally young, and probably, dumb. Now don’t you go a-searchin’!
Baby life has been going pretty well. It totally depends on the day of course, but I think generally the little one and I are somewhat put-together and well fed most of the time. I’ve started Jessi Klein’s “I’ll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood” (a valuable and poignant recommend from one of the women in my mom group) and I find it incredibly relatable, sometimes heartfelt, and nearly always darkly humorous. God, when she gets going about the “heroes journey” of motherhood I feel seen.
Mothering a newborn is tough, dirty work. What I wouldn’t do for an article of clothing (hers or mine) not completely covered in milk and spit up. I’m not even going to mention the sleep deprivation because obviously, but on a related note, picture rocking an 8 pound lead-weight for 2 hours at 3 am praying she falls asleep before your back and arms give out. You would hope that the result is at least a well-toned upper body. Unfortunately, the true affect is Popeye arms coupled with a saggy tummy and love handles (we’ll call them a hangover of pregnancy weight) which aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. This is motherhood! Now if you’ve also got a three year old at home then just amplify the noise, the tantrums, and the emotional rawness of the already raw situation.
To say all this and leave out the beauty of this tenderness is to leave out the raison d'être for having put yourself through it in the first place. It is a challenge, a test, that one must rise to every day, and really, every night. So shall we say the work is attended to “constantly”, “ongoing” and “forever onward”. It is the shameless setting aside of all other identity-defining pursuits to do the only thing that truly matters- keeping your helpless little fledglings alive, well, happy, and well-balanced until they can proverbially “leave the nest”.
For example, it is beautiful to see your son kiss his sister’s tiny forehead. It’s oddly thrilling to see your newborn lift her head on her own… It is magical to hold them both as they sit still and fully engaged (Well, the 3yo is engaged. The 1 mo is more or less sleeping…) watching some inane YouTube video of disembodied hands driving a toy truck through a homemade city scene. Hey middle-aged fellas with the spare time- I see you! And I thank you.
It is a heroes journey to show up every day, every moment, really, and pull the best of you out of the depths of your being to give to them. You carve a path for your kids to follow, shielding (but slowly revealing) the trials and tribulations of the world that surrounds them, and then one day you set them free. It is the purest poetry when it is not mind-meltingly mundane or draining and frustrating.
And most of all, the heroes journey through motherhood is all-encompassing… which is why this blog is not about my journey in art, today.
