a horror I could barely name. Pregnancy did nothing to warm me to the idea. I did not like the feeling of my body being inhabited in that way. It felt intrusive and uncomfortable and, despite what everyone kept saying, completely unnatural.
Niamh was born in the early hours of a Monday morning, after my waters had broken during Mass. It was an ordeal, from the embarrassment of stumbling with wet legs out of the church to the excruciating pain and the midwife’s cruel pragmatism as she urged at me to “Push, push,” and told me to offer my pain up for the souls in Purgatory. I thought it would never end.
Then Niamh was here, and in the split second that I heard her cry, everything changed. I had carried her for nine months, and yet she was a complete surprise. I could never have expected something so pure and so magnificent as this child. Immediately that I held her, a sob rose up through me, grief that I had left this joy so long to experience. She was tiny and frail, like a petal, yet as complex as nature itself. The earth, sun, moon, stars—all the continents of America and Africa and the galaxies beyond—could not contain the love I felt. I wept, but with a joyful abandon. I wept in gratitude to God for her breath on my breast, and I wept because although I had made her, already I knew she did not belong to me and that one day I would have to let her go.
James must have been standing with his ear to the door because I heard him call out. The midwife told him that it was a girl and that we were not ready to see him, and I shocked myself by raising up from the bed and hollering at her to stop fussing around with her cleaning and let him in.
It was the first time I felt love in looking at James’s face. Not pity, or concern, or grudging respect—but a passionate belonging. In the years we had been together, I had always felt apart from him. I knew now that as long as this child lived, we could not be parted. And in that moment I wanted to draw him to me. For the two of us to wrap ourselves around this new life to cherish, nourish, and guide her. James looked from my face to the swaddled cocoon in my lap and his eyes shone with a symphony of emotion I had never seen before: terror, wonderment, and a tender, tender love.
*
Watching something you love grow is both pleasure and pain. Each new phase—crawling, walking, talking—brings shouts of pride, but with each also is the mourning of the phase gone past. Never again the cluck of her chin as she fed on my breast; never again small enough to carry in one arm while I stirred soup or carried turf with the other; never again an infant lying in a muslin-covered basket in the top fields while we worked. The soft down of her scalp, fingers the size of beads, the mysterious whispers before words come, behind the joy of each new talent, I regretted the passing of the last. I had a secret longing to keep her small and precious, and a part of me. As miserable as I had been during pregnancy I now often dreamt that she was back inside my body and that the two of us were floating like that forever, clinging to the other for soft comfort in some eternal womb.
Time is impatient to take your child from you. So you learn that each moment is precious, and that life is an inevitable clock. The pleasure of rearing a child is just a prelude to the pain of letting it go, and I anticipated that with an ache every day of her small life. I thought it would make it easier when she finally reached adulthood. But it didn’t.
No matter what wisdoms or tricks for happiness you learn, a mother worries every day of her life for her child. A wise one will pretend to let them go to keep them, but it’s just a sensible lie. Motherhood is a sweet, sweet suffering; a joy today is marked by fear for tomorrow and a craving for yesterday.
James was a wonderful father. In those early years of our parenthood, I had the pleasure of feeling close to my husband. Often we would both lie down on our iron
Niamh was born in the early hours of a Monday morning, after my waters had broken during Mass. It was an ordeal, from the embarrassment of stumbling with wet legs out of the church to the excruciating pain and the midwife’s cruel pragmatism as she urged at me to “Push, push,” and told me to offer my pain up for the souls in Purgatory. I thought it would never end.
Then Niamh was here, and in the split second that I heard her cry, everything changed. I had carried her for nine months, and yet she was a complete surprise. I could never have expected something so pure and so magnificent as this child. Immediately that I held her, a sob rose up through me, grief that I had left this joy so long to experience. She was tiny and frail, like a petal, yet as complex as nature itself. The earth, sun, moon, stars—all the continents of America and Africa and the galaxies beyond—could not contain the love I felt. I wept, but with a joyful abandon. I wept in gratitude to God for her breath on my breast, and I wept because although I had made her, already I knew she did not belong to me and that one day I would have to let her go.
James must have been standing with his ear to the door because I heard him call out. The midwife told him that it was a girl and that we were not ready to see him, and I shocked myself by raising up from the bed and hollering at her to stop fussing around with her cleaning and let him in.
It was the first time I felt love in looking at James’s face. Not pity, or concern, or grudging respect—but a passionate belonging. In the years we had been together, I had always felt apart from him. I knew now that as long as this child lived, we could not be parted. And in that moment I wanted to draw him to me. For the two of us to wrap ourselves around this new life to cherish, nourish, and guide her. James looked from my face to the swaddled cocoon in my lap and his eyes shone with a symphony of emotion I had never seen before: terror, wonderment, and a tender, tender love.
*
Watching something you love grow is both pleasure and pain. Each new phase—crawling, walking, talking—brings shouts of pride, but with each also is the mourning of the phase gone past. Never again the cluck of her chin as she fed on my breast; never again small enough to carry in one arm while I stirred soup or carried turf with the other; never again an infant lying in a muslin-covered basket in the top fields while we worked. The soft down of her scalp, fingers the size of beads, the mysterious whispers before words come, behind the joy of each new talent, I regretted the passing of the last. I had a secret longing to keep her small and precious, and a part of me. As miserable as I had been during pregnancy I now often dreamt that she was back inside my body and that the two of us were floating like that forever, clinging to the other for soft comfort in some eternal womb.
Time is impatient to take your child from you. So you learn that each moment is precious, and that life is an inevitable clock. The pleasure of rearing a child is just a prelude to the pain of letting it go, and I anticipated that with an ache every day of her small life. I thought it would make it easier when she finally reached adulthood. But it didn’t.
No matter what wisdoms or tricks for happiness you learn, a mother worries every day of her life for her child. A wise one will pretend to let them go to keep them, but it’s just a sensible lie. Motherhood is a sweet, sweet suffering; a joy today is marked by fear for tomorrow and a craving for yesterday.
James was a wonderful father. In those early years of our parenthood, I had the pleasure of feeling close to my husband. Often we would both lie down on our iron
Similar Books
