ah! bright wings
Dear Avi,
Today was my due date exactly one year ago, with you. I remember it so well. Your Nonna and Papa were here with us, the house was buzzing with latent excitement. I was officially on leave because I could not bear to sit at a desk and think about numbers or strategy and most of my work was already transitioned to other folks anyway, but really everything else on the home front was ready too: your nursery was set up, the crib was ready next to our bed, we had backup cans of formula, a rocking chair to rock you to sleep, bottles, a stroller, all the things we were told to buy and agonized over.
Everything was ready, waiting for you: the newest member of this household, to arrive.
We didn’t actually have a whole lot else to do but wait. So on this day a year ago we went to the sunflower field: every July at Dorothea Dix park near our house, there is a field of sunflowers. People to go take pictures, walk around, influencers and families and people in yoga clothes standing on one leg, all while these sunflowers slowwwwly move their heads over the course of the day to face the sun.
I remember realizing how different our lives would be, and how everything was about to change, but we couldn’t really do anything about it except wait. Time went by so slowly in those last few days. I was so swollen and tried to keep a smile on, my skin stretched so taut I thought it might burst at the seams every time you kicked me in my ribs. Your dada was so excited and so anxious, the second I said anything like “ow” or “ugh” or groaned in any way he would drop whatever he was doing and rush to my side to ask what happened. He was ready to jump into action (as he usually is): he already new the route to the hospital, where to drop me off to go park, how to get up to the maternity ward, he had read the entire doula certification manual and knew exactly what I wanted and was ready to hold my hand and be my guide. He is the best (you already know this).
Avi, this year has been crazy. Sometimes I hold you and read the news and it feels like whiplash: how can something so beautiful exist in a world where horrible things are happening? It’s the greatest question: how are things that are born so sunny and growing towards love and light capable of carnage? Does the passage of time make us sour, do the forces of society and capitalism sharpen our edges in a way that feels (dare I say it) unnatural somehow? This is too simple of a narrative. Not everything about you this past year was perfect and shiny and bright. You had your moments, though frankly they were few and far between. I had my moments, much more often, grappling with my own expectations and bodily changes and trying my best to shield you from this, trying to let you see the best of me always.
I wrote this back in October (before I had a newsletter), but it feels relevant to think back on now:
“What I’ve learned mostly is that giving your feelings a box will make them grow in the shape of that box. Cut a hole in the box and they’ll grow towards the light. At some point in the past twelve weeks I must have done this subconsciously, perhaps while rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, probably a little bit at a time, because now I feel mostly an immense sense of gratitude for having had the time to see my baby grow and smile and now laugh, and to feed him with my body and share that tiny pure untarnished spirit with people who love him as much as I do. How lucky am I, and how lucky is he.
Mostly I just tried to make it to bed with a sense of purpose and gratitude. The more I did it, the more natural it felt. Cut yourself some slack, you made it through another day. Mary Oliver said the world offers itself up to your imagination, over and over. Over and over. Over and over. There is power in repetition. It reinforces whatever you choose to do. Over and over. I started to see that people are full of love to give, and HOW lucky is my kid (and me) to be able to receive it. From his grandparents, the core of my support system these past twelve weeks. From his dad, my partner and rock. From me, his lifeblood, who somehow knew how to wake up and take care of him every day. He doesn’t care that I’m not perfect, all he needs is my responsiveness and attachment to grow- over and over. The world is full of love. If you see it, even a little, reinforce it over and over and it will grow. I believe it now more than ever.
Sometimes baby steps are still progress. Day 1: put laundry in basket. Day 2: Take it downstairs. Day 3: wash it. Day 4: fold it. Day 5: Take it back up and put it away only to realize a pile has accumulated on the floor where the basket was five days ago, and you’ll have to start it over again. Guess what? I only have 24 hours in a day and I can spend it holding my baby or doing laundry. I have to remind myself what’s important and fleeting and spoiler alert: it’s not the laundry. The past 12 weeks have required a rewiring of my brain in order to see this, but I had to learn it for myself. The words I read on T-shirts and mommy blogs or well-intended epithets from friends don’t quite fit. I have to write words that fit. That’s the itch… otherwise I conform to existing narratives and that feels a bit like the lazy way out. It’s not my truth. And maybe you’ll read this and it won’t be your truth either, and that’s okay. That’s the whole point. Dig through your box, use your fingers and your nails and scrape out a tiny little hole for yourself, and let the light in. I promise you, the world offers itself to you, full of light, if you let it.”
I thought about those words ^ yesterday back at the sunflower field. I want you to grow towards the light (a convenient metaphor but please bear with me). Gerard Manley Hopkins captured this in his feelings about a higher power, a poem I read in high school and has stuck with me since - ah! bright wings. What a cool wash of relief, this is the whole point, we are protected. I don’t believe in a god (maybe you will, it’s up to you), but I believe the point of our existence on this earth is love and beauty: to seek it, to nurture it and to create it ourselves. I will leave you with his words.
God’s Grandeur
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Love you always my sweetest sunflower,
Mama