Parenthood

M-e-l-t

Published on by Lisa

Isaiah just had a rare pre-sleep meltdown. It lasted 30 minutes. The noise was similar to that of a child who has been denied every kind of right, pleasure, applesauce, and freedom known to a 9 month old. Every effort Nick and I made only made things worse. His screech oscillated between hollering at us and showing us his tonsils. I believe the neighbors were peering out behind their curtains, “Such lovely landscaping, such a questionable parenting tactics…”

Nick and I used to say that we would like four children. These days, we say, “We’re open to having 1 to 4 children.”

The Tale of Two Academics: Marriage, Baby, and One MBA

Published on by Lisa

In my marriage, I wore the tassel in the family.  With every fiber of my being, I would have bet that it would’ve been ME in going back to graduate school and Nick would be at home, baby in one arm, diaper bag in another, and cell phone cradled in the overextended neck.  But, no.  That’s not where life took us.  That’s not where we are right now.

Today was Nick’s first day for his MBA program.  And what a fine choice and privilege it is for us to pursue additional degrees so we can open even more doors to our family’s future.

But, graduate school isn’t what it used to be.  I completed my grad degree in 2004 as a single, newly minted master of psychology and pastoral ministry.   My cohort was roughly 75 students and similar to me: overly addicted to intellectual stimulation with an ever increasing love of the academic life.  We loved the academic world;  surrounded by brainiac professors and manaical graduate assistants, late talks about “my place in the world,” and a fastidious devotion to the pursuit of truth.

That and a lot of alcohol.

But it isn’t 2004 anymore and I’m not a single, Boston bar hopper.  Somewhere in the past six years, my life blew up with marriage, jobs, moving, change, growth, and responsibilities surpassing my individualistic desires.  My pursuit of truth has changed.  From diplomas to diapers.  Discussion to lullaby.  My make-up bag is untouched.  The snazzy going-out purse is now a rather dull grey messenger bag, scattered with pacifiers, a stuffed animal, and a bulb syringe.  I know, it’s dead sexy.

What happened to me?  (And I don’t ask that in a whiny voice, I mean a reflective one…)

I guess the best answer I gave myself today was this:  I learned how to compromise.   In 2004, about 99% of my days were all about me.  Today, 2010, my days are mostly about other people.  And the pursuit of truth is found in the murky waters of everyday life.  The ivory tower does not always have the best view.  That took me about five years to understand.

When a parent goes to graduate school, the entire family goes to graduate school. Even though there’s only one student charged, everyone pays tuition.  Tuition of time, attention, presence, thought, and engagement.  Like a hanging mobile, one piece cannot be moved without the entire plane moving with it.

By 12noon today, I was tired enough to go to bed.  And I had slept plenty the night before.  While Nick is up to his neck in orientation, classes, meetings, and trying to get his footing in a whole new base of knowledge, I am waaaaay over my head with Isaiah and keeping our job-sharing job going. And writing.  And trying to remember to drink water.

I could list the hundred different things that went wrong today.  I could list the thousand things that went right.

Or I could reflect on the hard pill epiphany of the day: behind every hard working parent in gradschool is a harder working parent at home.   And that opportunity – to seek a better place and identity as a family through the means of higher education – is a privilege that has no room for complaints.

**in the car at 5:21pm**

– after explaining at length how my day went –

Me: So, how was it?  Tell me everything.

Nick: I will.  I just feel bad that you had a bad day.

Me:  I didn’t have bad day.  I had a very hard day.  There’s a difference.

The Humbling Pill of Parenthood

Published on by Lisa

When I was a kid, I remember watching TV and movies and thinking that adults were overly sensitive about stupid comments.

Anytime there was a scene – probably some afterschool special about smoking or drinking or smoking the reefer – that involved two arguing adults and one of them growling, “Don’t tell me how to raise my kid,” I remember thinking what’s the big deal?  Someone gives you advice on what you should do with your kid?  What’s to get so touchy about?

Well, not that I AM a parent, I see what the big deal is all about.

Giving unsolicited advice – about anything, really – is like shooting a canon across the ocean without certainty of when and where it’s going to land.  The more I understand how much goes into parenting – how a thousand decisions are made before noon – the more I begin to get it: parenting isn’t just about how you raise your child, it’s about who YOU are as a person.  What your values reveal.  What you choose to risk and not risk.

Parenting choices reveal who we are on the inside.  And when someone offers you their opinion or advice on how you should treat your own child, it feels very much like a cautionary note stapled onto your forehead that reads: I’M DOING A MEDIOCRE JOB.  I SHOULD TRY HARDER.

Yes, mistakes are made and some decisions turn into regrets that we’d like to take back, but for the most part, we invest our authentic, unapologizing selves into raising our kids.  While each child is an individual person, yes, while they are young, they are like huge empty fishbowls and we, the parents, fill them with all of our stuff – good and bad – with transparent glass so everyone can see, judge, and speculate what we are made of.

I think I’ve grown much more empathetic to the world all around me since I’ve become a mother.  I think that’s because raising Isaiah has been the most difficult and joyous adventure of my life and its softened any parts of me that were previously impatient or judgmental.  When you try your absolute best at something, and you see the mistakes you’re making along the way, your heart begins to cave in a bit for others.  I’ve begun looking at unsmiling strangers or rude encounters with random folks and instead of my normal thought process of wondering if there was a traffic cone stuck up their butts, I now approach it with much more humility.  Now instead of traffic cones, I wonder if they have an ill child at home and that’s why they’re rushing out of the parking lot and cut me off at the intersection.  I wonder if, for the most part, people ARE trying their best in life and instead of silently breaking them down in my head, I can send them good thoughts, pray for them even, since I know now a critical truth about growing up: sometimes your best isn’t seen as very much.

Parenting has been the most humbling experience of my life.

That, and when Nick beats me at a board game.

Backed Up

Published on by Lisa

Someday, probably not too far off into the distant future, Isaiah is going to ask, probably demand, why I wrote about him so much in a public domain.  Specifically, he will want to know why I wrote about something so personal, so private to his life and dared to share it with 6 billion people (minus the folks with no internet access).

After seven days of only wet diapers, Isaiah finally pooped.

It was one week ago when it all began.  I noticed he hadn’t had any soiled diapers.  Didn’t freak out until day #2, but was somewhat mitigated by Nick, the unflappable father, who remarks,”I’m sure it’s normal.  He’s probably fine.”

And then day #5 came.  We finally got a hold of a nurse at the office who instructed

1) Prunes.  Lots of prunes.

2) Put him on his belly

3) Soak his fanny.  (And she did say fanny.)

4) Rectal thermometer.  (Oh dear…)

5) Pediatric laxative.

So, Isaiah turned into something close to a 20lb. fig when I started feeding him baby prunes.  He loved them, but not BM.

Soaked him.  Twice.  Nothing happened.

He went to the doctor who felt his stomach and figured it’s probably just his digestive system getting used to solids.  It probably doesn’t help that I fed him bananas.

And then this morning.  Day #7, he was playing on the floor, with a big grin on his face.  And then suddenly he went still, a peaceful look on this face and I looked up from my chair, wondering if a garbage truck had entered the room because the most FOUL odor wafted across my face.

He went.  He went big time.

And I rejoiced with him.  Coaxing him along, in the likes of Drill Baby Drill, “Poop Baby Poop!”

When he was done, his eyes got doubled lidded, he gave me a sloppy smile and fell asleep on the changing table.

Rejoice in the clean-up!  That’s my advice to BP.

It’s Not Just My Imagination

Published on by Lisa

There are days where I wonder if there are some unexplained things about the relationship between mother and child. I mean, think about it, a growing human being forms his bones, blood, and organs INSIDE a woman’s body. Everything the mother is, quite literally, is given to her child. It’s quite extraordinary.

There are days when I just look at the little Meatball and wonder, how did this kid ever fit inside me? How did he come from me?

Well, I soon found the explanation.

While Nick was in El Salvador, I was busy trying to clean our office. The one room that is consistently neglected because, since no one else but Nick or I ever go in there, it never meets the “we should pick up the living room before so and so come over,” or “we’re having company over so make sure you scrub the toilet and vaccuum,” requirements.

So, while I was hauling boxes of recycled paper out of the house and pouring through old papers, I came across one of my baby pictures. I saw it and I just stared. It was almost eerie.

It was the same feeling when Nick took this picture of me and Isaiah in the hospital. It was a feeling like, “I’ve seen this picture before somewhere, but I can’t think of what picture it is.”

I found the picture.

You tell me.

Is there some unexplained force that binds me with Isaiah?

I don’t know.

But since we look like almost identical twins from birth, I’m open to anything.

Birthing a New Feminism

Published on by Lisa

On December 20, 2009, I gave birth to two things: a 9lb. 7oz son and a new feminism. It was the third time my reproductive organs had encountered surgical metal; twice to remove ovarian tumors and cysts and once to remove a breathing boy.

By nightfall, I was vomiting from the drugs administered to my body for my c-section. After an excruciating vomiting episode, my head hit my pillow in utter exhaustion and my newborn began to cry out of hunger.

I looked at my body. Like a meticulous and tedious film director wanting to capture every detail of a flowerbed with a camera, I surveyed every inch of my body. I started at my feet.

My legs were buzzing numb, still, from surgery. To keep from forming blood clots, my legs had been strapped to a pumping machine. Two pieces of plastic swathed my legs. They hissed when they squeezed my calves and lazily loosened after three seconds of tight holds. The noise prevented me from deep sleep and made my legs sweat.

A catheter was inserted. I saw the bag full of my urine with taints of blood. It was a horrendous sight.

The dressing over my surgical incision covered the most tender and vulnerable part of my birthing body, the exit wound of my baby.

An ugly red rash had exploded onto the top of my chest. Its bumps were just as unsightly as they were itchy. A reaction, maybe from the hospital gown? Or hormones?

My left hand was a splotchy mess from a messy IV insertion. Mounds of clear tape awkwardly held in a needle and dried blood itched under the surface. It was hooked to a machine, beeping and regulating my body. Bags of I don’t know what dripped into my arm.

My right arm held Isaiah as I tried to breastfeed him. His desperate attempts to latch on were beyond painful, but with the help of countless nurses and my husband, he drank.

Gulped, really.

My normally brown face was gray with remnants of drugs and fatigue. No food. No water. Only ice chips. My water was taken away when I drank too much too soon and vomited into the pan again.

Later, to help stir bowel movements, an enema was inserted.

And I surveyed my body, every orifice of my body was either plugged, bandaged, bleeding, dry, or fatigued. And as Isaiah drank, my breasts ached with new agony, unfamiliar with this new demand of nourishment and, suddenly, as if my leg pumps, catheter, IV, and surgery scars weren’t enough, I began having more contractions. My uterus throbbed with an intensity that made my eyes close.

The hormones stimulated by breastfeeding will cause contractions. This will help your uterus descend and go back to its normal size.

And Isaiah’s latch intensified.

Never, in all the days of my life, had I ever undergone anything so life-giving. Never had I myself been so life-giving. Every part of my body was simultaneously healing and giving.

But I was in much pain. The lactation consultants were so beautiful and caring, I wanted to weep into their laps.

They gently touched, massaged, and handled my breasts. The nipples, swollen and red, screamed with pain at the slightest touch of a hospital gown. Maya, a middle aged woman from Russia, was sharp, informative, and decisive. Her teaching was fast, her hands careful, but her eyes were business. She recognized the pain, she knew how hard this was. Myra understood that I was thisclose to losing my sanity.

She understood that while the vagina or, in my case, the abdomen, was the door to life in the womb, it was the nipples that were the entry point of survival for my son.

The body, my body became a poem, a poem of survival.
______

I stayed in the hospital room, save two hours to walk down the hall for a parenting class, for four days straight. My dreams were in neon and my breasts were engorged. What I remember about that period in my life was how unbelievably gentle and kind people can be when you are in pain.

Briefly, like a loose leaf lightly touching a windshield before moving on, I thought about Feminism. Now a mother. Never again like before. Never just I. My life just took the most radical turn. That morning I had made myself chocolate chip pancakes. Six hours later, I was a mother. Everything had changed in the blink of an eye. And in that change, I came to a realization that there were two kinds of feminism. The Feminism of issues and the feminism of our lives.

I realized the Feminism that is perpetuated in mainstream and mainstream-like media is not the feminism of our lives. It is the feminism of commerce. It is the feminism that picks and chooses the winners and losers, the visible and invisible, and accessible and ignored. It chooses what will sell and what sells focuses on status climbing, material wealth, and westernized independence. Things that bring pleasure, not transformation.

The Feminism that has stepped on the backs of women of color and ignored the backs of trans and disabled women is the Feminism that camouflages itself with diverse panels and collectives but neglects to modernize its definition of social liberation in the era of digital media. It is the feminist theories stuck in the academy with no implored action. It is the round table discussions reserved for annual conferences that result in no true connection or building blocks.

This is the Feminism that has the time and luxury to ask leisure questions such as, “Why don’t you identify as feminist?” and “Where are all the women of color bloggers?” The same Feminism that circulates the energy over the same privileged circle of the educated, the employed, or as I call it, “the Sames;” the ones who stand an inch into the outskirts, banging on the “equality” door but who also ignore the women whose heads are in toilets cleaning their bathrooms or nannying their children.

This is the Feminism of fruitless banter and recycled conversations. The space to bring these issues up could be a hopeful sign of progress, however, the repetition of those conversations and the predictable accusations and defenses serve no other purpose than keeping the pendulum swinging in balance. Aka, the status quo.

This is the same Feminism that haunts the academy and academic support offices such as Women’s Centers and elite conference gatherings. The conversation of the privileged becomes priority over decision-making. Consciousness-raising is imperative for transformation, but it cannot begin and end with questions. There must be forward motion, however slight.

Simply putting 50% of women into anything male dominated may alter the demographic, but that’s not necessarily transformative. Putting a woman’s face where a man’s once was, without any sort of critical change, is not equality but appeasement. And before Linda Hirshman takes that quote of mine again out of context, let me explain further.

The purpose of feminism is to end itself. Andrea Dworkin called it one day without rape. Others have other land posts measuring feminism’s victory. The purpose of feminism is to one day find ourselves where we don’t need to fight for human rights through the lens of women’s oppression. Note: I didn’t write that the purpose is to bring down the man. The purpose is not to have a female president. The purpose is to transform the infrastructure that holds kyriarchy in its place. Replacing men with women – of any race, ethnicity, creed, or ability – who refuse to acknowledge the insidious and mutating face of gender oppression is not forward stepping. It’s a perpetuation of history.

And so the question comes: how invested are you in the liberation of women?

Because if you agree that the liberation of all women carries more weight than the identification as a liberal feminist, the feuds over whether feminism is dead becomes irrelevant. The uproar should be about dying women, not a dying Feminism.
_____

There was something so entirely miraculous about those four days in the hospital. I witnessed myself birth life. Bones from my bones. Blood from my blood. Life from my womb, I brought a person into the world. From two, I grew my family to three.

This awesome mystery/reality settled itself in bits and fragments.

My father told me that the birthing woman is different afterward. Her power is different. She herself is different.

My power is different.

For months, nearly everyone I encountered – friends and strangers alike – offered their opinion on what parenting should and would be for me. It was in that hospital room, where Nick slept uncomfortably on the couch without shaving and I, hooked to monitors and machines, understood a profound difference.

Parenting is the responsibility that we both shared. Together. It would be the late nights of feeding, rocking, and soothing that we’d walk together, he and I. But mothering, becoming a mother, was an entirely different bond. To me, motherhood is a yearning helplessness. Yearning to love more, yearning to teach better, yearning to make the world right – however impossible that might be. And recognizing that impossibility often made me cry.

I suddenly had this crazy urge to clean up the world for my son. I needed to organize.
___________

The feminism of my life unfolded in a love story that resulted in the birth of my son. Gathered at my bed was my mother, the woman I’ve thought of and written so much about. The woman who I have processed more than any other human I’ve met. My father kept stroking my hair and muttering concerns over my state.

The feminism I had begun to build was a house of love that no longer shunned my parents out of frustration, but embraced our difficulties and disagreements. Filipino culture was not something I needed to understand to live, it was something I needed to live out.

Nick held the can for me while I vomited. He wore scrubs and, in the delivery room, wore a surgical mask. The shade of the scrubs made his hazel eyes deep green. I saw him between hurls. I saw my son. Our son.
____________

Anything that I would dedicate my life to had to include, even demand, men. It may prioritize the lens of women’s experience for the liberation of all, but men had to be there. Where was I going without my son? What was I creating if not for him? I didn’t want to go where my family would not belong. It no longer made sense to separate myself and be alone. There was no division between the world I wanted to build and my son’s participation in it. I wanted freedom. Mine and his.

The Feminism of issues serves its purpose well. It informs us of the problems. But we’re more than issues, are we not? Isn’t our life worth more than the issues?

The feminism of our lives is the story of love, survival, testament, death, and epitaph. It is what we dedicate ourselves to and what we will pass on as truth to our children. Whether or not we identify as “feminist” is a sandbar to the oceanic movements of feminisms.

In my community, there is so much work to do, so much silence to break, that for the brief minute of a life where I get to use my voice, I am not going to expend my breath on explaining whether or not I identify as feminist. And the back-breaking work of so many women and men who never use the word feminism is not qualified or standardized on the arbitrary use of the word either.

The awareness matters. The intentional work toward eradicating inequality matters. The feminisms of my life matters. The use of the label does not.

Listen. Listen closely. Can you hear it?

The revolution will not be a movement. It will be Birthed.

The Changes of Spring

Published on by Lisa

And suddenly, in Isaiah’s world, this THING happened. There was no build-up. There was no transition. HEAT appeared.

And just like that, I had to explain it to him: SPRING is here. Or as Nick says, “Just tell him that each day is the best day of his life because the weather keeps getting better and better for the next six months.” That’s true if you were born on December 20th.

Isaiah’s legs are suddenly bare, no more extra onesies and winter caps. The warmer has been removed from his car seat to keep his skin air cool and his plumpy aura pleasant. It’s suddenly warm and the first day it went from the 40s to the 80s, Isaiah slept almost half the day, as if his body went into some sort of confused mode that drank all of his energy, “I have to regulate the temperature of this big baby, we need to shut down,” is what I imagine his cells and neurons communicating to one another.

It’s been about three and a half months since Nick’s and my life took a radical turn. And things are indeed different, as I reflect on the past year. I believe Isaiah was conceived during this past week and, if you believe that life begins the moment of conception, Isaiah is technically a year old already. He friggin looks like a toddler anyway, so that feels appropriate to write.

When he’s fussy or won’t stop making noises, sometimes I pick him up and go outside and show him all the signs of new life in the world. The tulips springing out from the ground in our back yard, the tiny budding flowers, and the tips of green beginning to open themselves into leaves on the trees. Isaiah’s fascinated by the color and the wind on his face and I start laughing to myself when I look at him look at spring. For me, Isaiah’s the ultimate sign of new life and here he is, grazing the new spring grass with his chubby foot.

The gorgeous weather has also permitted us to go for long walks together and that has made ALL the difference during the day. No more being cooped inside the house, no more praying for the snow to stop trapping us indoors. I feel free! Boundless! And I’m enjoying it while I can because I know in a handful of weeks, my allergies will bound me to the house once more and I will be unable to take meds because of nursing Isaiah. This will definitely be interesting. I’m going to look like a bloated, congested goat.

Isaiah’s life keeps changing our world and the worrying, planning, and mild anxiety doesn’t seem to stop. Ironically, accompanying all of this is a deep serenity that I was not prepared to find in parenting. Sometimes, when it’s just me and Isaiah, and I’m singing him to sleep, I kiss him on the top of his head and can feel the soft spot. A physically vulnerable place on his body revealing his pure youth – his skull is still fusing together, his brain is still growing. And in this place where I rest my mouth, I can feel his heartbeat. His heartbeat. I can feel his actual heartbeat at the top of his head. Something about that often makes me cry. In so many ways, Isaiah is this utterly dependent little thing of a human who can only wiggle around, half roll on a couch, and yelp for his needs. And yet he is his own person. He’s a completely separate human being from me and Nick, a person who will grow into his own, and experience his own choices and trials, failures and triumphs. He has his own heart. He doesn’t need mine or Nick’s.

That realization startled me. Isaiah is his own person.

Somewhere in the future I see myself struggling to let him go. Whether that’s his first day at kindergarten, his first boy/girl party, his driver’s license, or college decision, I don’t know. I can’t fathom how this little miracle is someday going to leave us and show us his own heart’s identity.

For now, I’m just enjoying those moments of realization and relishing in all the little epiphanies he brings me on a daily basis. For now, that is more than enough.

Isaiah is a gift that is endlessly unwrapping.

Control

Published on by Lisa

My wonderful mama has flown in from Virginia to stay for a weeks with us so she can help out with Isaiah. I never appreciated another set of hands around the house so much in my life. You’d think that between Nick and I, we’d have everything under control.

Shatter those expectations right now. There’s no such thing as control when you’re learning how to be a parent for the first time. Quite the opposite, you’ll find that nearly everything is actually OUT OF CONTROL.

For example – let’s take the bathroom.

Once the pride and joy of our house when we got a few things redone, but since Isaiah has come along, it has evolved into a banished and neglected corner on the second floor. It is in such dire need of a cleaning that even NICK said something about how we need to get control of that thing. By “thing,” we’re talking about the overdue scrubbing of the tub. Our BRAND NEW tub that we’ve neglected for months now.

Control is a funny illusion of life. We THINK we know what’s around the corner because we anticipate problems, we logically hypothesize the risks and factors of every decision and, understandably, wait for the expected outcome.

Remember, though, that an illusion is something that appears to be real. It presents itself as something actual, something tangible, but it is, in fact, not.

It’s like how I believe I have Isaiah’s schedule in control and then, out of nowhere, he decides he’s bored out of his mind and wiggles like crazy for an hour. He’s fed, dry, and not tired. He’s just wiggling. Wiggle, wiggle.

He wiggles out of his bouncer, he wiggles off the blanket on the floor, he wiggles out of my arms, he wiggles to the corner of the couch. And I think, “I can’t control this boy.”

Ah HA! Parenting lesson #827462 – NO CHILD IS UNDER OUR CONTROL, PARTICULARLY CHUBBY NEWBORNS.

And thus Nick and I feel out of control at times. We do our best to stay in routine, not make any plans and be nerdy 30-somethings with no lives outside our jobs and domestic responsibilities that include trips to Home Depot. We have learned that control is, quite frankly, laughable.

I thought I had control of nursing Isaiah and yet, still, every stinking week, something comes up. This week, for example, I developed a low grade fever on Sunday. My leg muscles were achy and my whole body was sore. I couldn’t believe I was sick. Considering how neurotic I’ve been about washing and/or sanitizing my hands every time I touch an unsterilized door knob, I didn’t think I’d catch any bug.

And as it turns out, I was dehydrated. I kept drinking waterbottles full of H20 and didn’t have to pee at all. Miraculously (insert sarcasm there), the next morning my fever broke. I kept drinking and drinking and by the early afternoon, I felt as fine as a shiny new button.

How could I forget to increase my water intake? Nursing, working out, the weather is *just* beginning to warm up…hello? Water? More of it?

Before I admonished myself too harshly, Nick shared a story with me that made me feel oodles better…

The other night Nick woke up in the middle of the night because he heard Isaiah on the monitor. Nick thought Isaiah was just fussing around but he still got up to listen to the monitor more closely. He was alarmed, though, when he realized that Isaiah’s breathing was making an irregular high pitched squeak, like he was having trouble breathing. As he started to move quickly toward the door, concerned that maybe Isaiah was sick or in a bad sleeping position, he noticed that the high pitched noise was moving with him, despite he was growing further and further away from the monitor.

“It was my own breathing,” Nick told me. “It was my own freaking nose that was making those noises. I couldn’t even distinguish my own self from a baby monitor.”

Mhm. That’s bad, babe, I thought.

So, you have a dehydrated and dizzy mom and a dad who can’t hear his own nostrils.

Perfect.

The Irony of His First Laugh

Published on by Lisa

Writing, for me, serves many purposes. Not only is it my passion, my center, my lifelong dream and goal, writing is also cathartic. When I write, it always relieves something. It helps me share the good. It also helps me release the aggravation.

Today, I am writing for the latter.

It is my first taste in understanding how parents can simultaneously love their child and also want to run away to Bora Bora alone and get lost in the beauty of the ocean, away from screaming cries and milk stains and the smell of diapers and the sight of bad eczema.

Today Isaiah was a complete paradox. After sleeping through the night consistently for over a month (I know, I know – we’re incredibly blessed and I shouldn’t be complaining), he didn’t last night. He WAH!ed and AIGH!ed for an hour while I tried everything to calm him down, but…to no avail.

He woke at 8am and was just as fussy. So I stripped him down to his diaper to look for any signs of…anything – rashes, bumps, bruises – signs of discomfort or hurt. Nada.

While he laid on our big bed squirming like a fish out of water with nothing but his diaper on, I couldn’t help but laugh at how adorable he looked. His pure smooth skin (except his face where he has eczema, poor guy) and fat rolls…he looked like an enormous human cinnabon, just ready to be eaten. So I leaned over and teased him, calling him my favorite pumpkin and gave him a friendly zerbert on his stomach.

And thus came Isaiah’s first laugh.

3 hearty, adorable chuckles erupted from his tiny little mouth and I squealed in delight.

That was the highlight of the day.

The rest of the day he was either fussing, crying, yelping, or sadfacing. I was at my wit’s end and contemplated what Bora Bora looked like this time of year. I could hear it calling my name. Liiiiiisssssaaaaaa…LLLLLLLiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisssaaaaaa

I was brought back to reality when Isaiah spit up on me for the fifth time.

It was a toss-up between me and his burp cloth for WORST SMELL IN THE LIVING ROOM. We both were covered in Isaiah’s regurgitation.

Of course it had to be a night when Nick worked late until 9pm. He walked in to find me on the floor, lightly bouncing Isaiah in his bouncer while his eyelids drooped closer and closer to a close. My other hand was stuffing dinner in my face because I hadn’t eaten in hours. Taking care of Isaiah required both hands all day. Food was secondary. By 9pm, I was so ravenous, I felt like I was going to eat a piece of old firewood laying in the fireplace. It looked like a hotdog at the time.

Luckily, I was able to scarf down dinner while Isaiah bounced around for a few minutes. Nick had barely entered the house when I announced that I needed to go upstairs and get my sanity back. “I’m going to take a shower. If you need me, I’m NOT available.”

It’s ironic that Isaiah’s first laugh came today when I spent most of the day near tears with Bora Bora dreams. Nothing, not even the promise of spring in three weeks could alleviate the stress of a restless baby.

And so, I write.

4am Lessons

Published on by Lisa

Before I had a son, I wrote about feminism as a subject. It was a noun, sometimes even a verb. Feminism existed as a THING to be written out, explained, debated.

As the past seven weeks of my life have unfolded, I’ve either woken up to a new form or writing, or I’ve undergone some sort of lobotomy where I have no recollection about that kind of writing. You know, the kind of writing where I blatantly write FEMINISM IS THIS, IS NOT THAT, IS MORE LIKE THIS, IS DEFINITELY NOT THAT…

I breastfeed Isaiah and this painful learning process about the wonder of the body and the miracle of nurturing has captivated my writing in new subtleties. His eyes are dark and I stare into them. I don’t see anything but openness. His open pupils stare back into the dark storms of my eyelets and I wonder what he sees in me. And I think about the world and what it will tell him about being a boy, a growing man. The window alone reveals a half-snowed road and the neighbor’s holiday lights still hanging red and white, yet I see a colder world than the winter temperatures. And I worry.

I don’t believe teaching “Feminism” is going to do anything for my son. I don’t know if attending gender and women’s studies courses are going to save him from a hypermasculine society and sexually-distorted media driven world. Maternity leave has let me soak up the world without paid work and I am listening to the sounds of the news. The conversations around me. The behaviors of strangers in stores. The fragments of life are there for me to observe and I’m not convinced Isaiah will learn how to survive that world with “Feminism.”

There’s no bargaining in raising a child. The world, as I see it from Cleveland, does not bargain with mothers. It doesn’t exchange or make deals. Isaiah, with his soft cooing and heart-melting pouts, will be taught messages about his soul, his worth, his identity…and I’m praying I know how to raise him how to reject most of it.

Counter-cultural child-rearing is going to be a monstrous feat in my future. It already is…And the “Feminism” I knew – the kind that had me chasing conferences, journalists, and blog wars – has quieted itself, perhaps even buried itself. A new ecdysis is shedding, rapidly. In its place are questions of health care and education, public breastfeeding, family consumerism, and equal parenting.

To be of use, for Feminism to be of use to mothers, it must come complete with relevance to women’s lives. Ordinary lives and extraordinary responsibility. There is no room, in my son’s life, for classes or blogs, podcasts, or lectures.

All he has is me. All he knows is me his mother. His father, my partner. WE are all he will know for a window’s crack of time before the rest of the community begins to warm his world with ideas. The doubt and insecurity of my own ability to teach him weighs heavily in my heart.

And so I write. I write him letters. I whisper things into his ear at 4am when it feels like no one else in the world is awake. Just us, mother and son. I whisper things, things far too complicated for his tiny brain to comprehend, but I believe the introduction of my voice as a whisper will allow me into his psyche as a voice of reason. A guiding force of love.

I continue to write him letters and whisper into the night. And pray, that for now, it is enough.