The story my mother tells me - Page 4
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 10: Family Politics
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Georgia Blain
ABOUT FOUR WEEKS AFTER I WENT INTO LABOUR, everyone in Carolyn's class had had their babies. She organised a reunion. She did it for every class. We were to bring some food and meet at her house.
I had not been coping. I had just got out of hospital after being sent back there with mastitis. I had blacked out with a fever and was admitted. I was put on an antibiotic drip and lay in the bed with Odessa next to me in a crib. As I begged the midwives to help me settle her, I wondered how low I would have to go before someone would rescue me. On the third night, I rang Andrew at 4am and pleaded with him to come and stay. He slept on the floor next to my bed, exhausted and irritable. He did not understand. This was the best time of his life. Why didn't I feel the same, why was I crying all the time?
I felt I had made a terrible mistake. I shouldn't have had a child. I couldn't do this. I wanted to say it out loud. I wanted to warn everyone. "Don't be fooled," I wanted to say. "I'm here to tell you that this is not joy, it is not bliss," knowing that no words were adequate enough to convey the desolation I felt. Each time Odessa cried, I panicked. I did not know her, how could I comfort someone who was a stranger? Andrew, on the other hand, picked her up and held her tight, the delight never leaving his face as he rocked her back and forth until she eventually calmed.
Apart from my visits to the baby health clinic and my stay in hospital, I did not leave the house. I was scared that Odessa would cry and I would fall apart, my inability to cope evident to everyone. But I wanted to go to the reunion. I wanted to be able to talk to the other mothers about how hard this was (because surely they were in the same boat as me?). I wanted to know that I was not alone.
But it was not as I had hoped it would be.
They were all there, with their babies dressed up for the occasion.
It was wonderful, the parents said to each other, so amazing, and the mothers swapped birth stories: epidurals, emergency caesareans, 48-hour labours. When I told them I had been in hospital for only half an hour, they looked at me in envy.
In the kitchen, Carolyn asked me how I was coping.
"Not that well," I admitted, scared that I would start crying.
She smiled. "It's hard," she said.
She had a picture of a mother and a newborn baby on her fridge and on seeing me looking at it, she explained that it was someone from the birth classes she had run just before ours.
"The baby was born very ill," she said. "They were told he only had a couple of days to live."
"What happened?" I asked.
"They took him home. They wanted to have those two days with him in their own environment."
"And he died?"
He did.
Carolyn clapped her hands. It was photo time. This was what she did with every class. We lined our babies up along the length of the couch, the newest ones propped up by the larger ones. Odessa was at the end, thriving, awake, healthy; she beamed at the camera. The smaller ones were nodding off, falling asleep on the shoulders of the babies next to them. Everyone crowded around, laughing as they took their pictures. The glare of the flashlight made some of the babies cry and I watched as one mother seized her child out from the midst of the group, the tension momentarily sharp along the lines of her mouth as she tried to comfort him.
"It's hard, isn't it?" I said to the woman next to me. She didn't respond.
"When they cry, that is."
"Yeah, it is." She turned back towards the line-up on the couch. "But then you love them so much that it's all worth it."
I smiled back at her. "It is," I said, and the lie slipped out.
I looked at Odessa there, at the end, and at Andrew leaning through the others to take the picture, and I wished I had not come. I was not alone, but I did not realise it at the time. Months later, when I saw some of the women from the class, they, too, talked about tears, exhaustion, strained relationships and depression, but on that day at Carolyn's I felt I was the only one who had failed.
Later that afternoon, I left Andrew and Odessa at home and walked down to the beachfront. I sat on the steps at the southern end and stared out across the promenade. It had been hot and there were people everywhere. Children squealed, couples bickered, music boomed out of cars cruising slowly along the esplanade. An old man stood under the shower, his skin leathery smooth as the water sprayed down, glittering in the last of the sunlight.
Andrew and I often used to come down to the beach at this time. We would swim, go for a walk and then perhaps head out to a movie. The life that I once led was gone and I did not know how to enter the new life I had chosen. I did not know why I had chosen it. I had not yet experienced the startling love parents have for their children; I would, but I did not know that yet, and all I wanted in that moment was to go back to what I once was.
In the distance, two women walked towards me, a young boy running between them. They were talking to each other, laughing, and I watched as they stopped, the blonde woman leaning down towards her son, and opening a juice for him. As they approached, the blonde woman waved, and it took me a few moments to realise that I knew her. It was my friend, the one who had told me that the pain of childbirth was like riding the crest of a wave. I had not seen her since Odessa was born.
As I raised my hand, she left the other woman with her boy, and came towards me.
"How are you?" she asked.
I could not answer. I looked at her and beyond, to the people walking and eating and laughing, the sun setting in the west and the ocean, pale blue.
I could not speak.
"Oh, you poor thing," and she sat down next to me. "It's awful, isn't it?"
I could only nod.
"So hard."
I looked at her and I wanted to tell her that I had been watching her coming towards me and that I had envied her, that I had seen her laughing, out there, part of it, but with a child, and I had wished that I was her, that I was anyone but me.
"I can't do it," and it was all I could utter.
"I know what it's like," she said, and she did not attempt to counsel me.
We sat in silence. Behind us the park was darkening. The streetlights were coming on and a full moon was hovering on the lip of the horizon.
In about six months I would begin, tentatively, to fall in love. In a year, I would know that love was here to stay. By the time Odessa turned two, I would feel, without a doubt, that having her was the most miraculous, wonderful aspect of my life.
But on that night all I could do was look out across the ocean and know that I would be grateful for this moment. I had needed someone to tell me that she, too, had found it hard, but right then and there I had no strength for even gratitude. I just had to do this and wait for a change that I had to have faith in.
I stood up, and took one last look out across the beach. People were heading home.
"You have to go back?" she asked.
I nodded.
"Shall I walk with you?"
I shook my head.
"I'll be OK," I told her, and I turned my back to the sea and headed up the hill towards home. ♦