Out of my Body and In The World
9 Months
Today my child is nine months old. Nine months in the world of my womb, nine months now in the world of this other, larger sphere we all share.
I began this publication in my immediate postpartum time. I wanted to create a container for my self expression as I become a new person in this new life of motherhood.
Do you know the word matrescence? Too few do. In fact, I’m getting red lines under the word because my computer doesn’t even recognize it.
Matrescence describes the process of complete transformation of becoming a mother. It is a transformation with physical, emotional, hormonal, neurological, spiritual, and social components. But like all living systems, the total transformation is ineffably greater than the sum of these different parts.
I am a mother now, and I’m still surprised by it. I am so curious when people tell me I’m a good mother, what are they seeing? I’m so in it that I know I can’t see myself clearly, which stokes a subtle hunger for reflection from others that has always been with me, but sometimes lives in the background.
I don’t know what it is to be a good mother, but I love him. I love him and I want him to have what he needs to thrive in this world. I want him to know that his parents and grandparents are a source of safety and consistent love. I want him to not fear the world of soil and roots and fungi. I want him to have the nourishment he needs to have a body that supports him in being a vital force of healing in this world.
I think a lot about him as a young adult. I think about him calling me from somewhere I’ve never been and telling me about the good people he’s met. I think about all the different ways he’ll help me understand the new ways we might be understanding class and gender and race and technology in the coming decades, and I think about the ways we will let him know how open and supportive we are to anything he wants to tell us about himself- including anything that might warrant a retraction on these pronouns I’m using.
Thinking about him in the future helps me to really enjoy who he is now. His small, strong, soft, active body is a wonder. I express to my husband often, what an honor I feel it is to be able to hold him every day. That before we have babies, we’re lucky if we get more than a few moments of sweetness with other peoples’ babies; usually tinged with mutual nervousness and cut short before a real bond can form. Then, when it’s our turn, we’re thrown into it: an immersion into care and intimacy and touch with a tiny human which seems to never stop, and then by all accounts, is over too soon.
I don’t know about that, I can’t know about the retrospective on parenting until it’s my time to empty nest and give unsolicited laments to new parents at the post office (I hope I won’t but probably those who have subjected me to this felt the same way when they were in my position). What I do know is that I feel confident about my degree of presence with him, but I don’t love how little I’ve written since he was born. So here’s a review of who he is today, July 2nd of 2023, 9 months after his birth, written, it turns out, as a letter to him:
Akiva, you are a wonder. You want to go everywhere and see everything. In fact, I was trying to write this in your room while dad naps on your floor bed and you play, but you just crawled out of the room, through the hall, to the other side of the house, and are now banging your hand against the glass door leading to the garden because you are so eager to explore. I suspect that leaving the people you love most for adventure and discovery is something we will get used to, just know we are always overjoyed when you reach out for us, when you come crawl into our laps, when you let us know you’re ready to come home.
I am pleased to say that you love everything I’ve ever fed you. You’re great with green beans and asparagus, broccoli, and anything I mix with yogurt for you. This week I make two months worth of chicken liver pate because I’m reading Leonard Schlain’s book, Sex, Time, and Power about humans and iron, and I want you to have enough at this important time when your reserves from the placenta have run out. You ate it so well even when I think it’s kind of gross. When you are eating and playing, you have these moments where you are grasping something in your fist and you raise it to the heavens with this determined expression, and you gesture and shout victoriously. Sometimes it’s one of your little baby cheetos today it was your little lion. I hope you always find joy and victory in whatever is in your hands at any given moment. I hope you never lose that impulse to honor the great accomplishment that is being alive in every moment.
You just turned back to me and used a basket to pull yourself up to stand. After a few moments of examining the contents of the basket, you released your hands and stood there with an expression of such determination. It’s one of the longest moments of free standing you’ve done so far, and I know you’ll be walking soon, so I want to be sure to note this next thing:
As soon as you could sit up straight you’ve been pulling yourself up to stand. This made us feel that it was likely you might walk before crawling, but this wasn’t the case. After a while of creative rolling and wriggling to get around, you figured out crawling pretty well. So well in fact, that I thought there was a problem; you tend to pull one knee forward like a normal crawl, but then drag the other knee forward asymmetrically. I was worried you may have something amiss with that hip, but I’ve noticed it changes sides, and you only do it on smooth surfaces. So you do a classic crawl on carpet, but a hybrid, more efficient glide on wood and tile. You are your father’s child, always looking for biomechanical efficiency.
Your body is so soft, so tender, so new. I know why people are emotionally flooded and want to eat your feet when they see you; baby feet are such an amazing phenomena. Being bipedal is such a core element of being human that looking at feet which have never held a body, never walked the earth, is a strange and novel miracle. I feel this way about every part of you. Your hands which love to explore the world, your bow legs which will straighten out as your legs accustom themselves to holding you up with gravity’s assistance, your extremely cute butt which makes me think of the little rascals every day. Your big blue eyes which still may change, so I drink up the color that they are now while curiously remaining open to whatever color they may become. Your arms that are shockingly strong and made your second cousin Amelia predict with absolute confidence you’ll be a bodybuilder when she first met you when you were just a week old. By the time you might read this, everything will have changed. The scent, the texture, the shapes of your skin will be so completely different. Your hair will change and you will have words to share back with me. But for now, this is perfect, tiny, beloved you, and we cannot speak, but we can hold one another, and I can kiss you and blow raspberries, and watch you discover the world.
You love water, and it brings me great joy. It’s a bit stressful that you are constantly making a beeline to the dogs’ water bowl (you spilled it over while I was writing the previous paragraph and I had to throw towels around the kitchen floor), but it’s beautiful how you love to splish-splash. We just got you a beautiful evil eye kiddie pool which you sploshed around in earlier with a sphere of icy flowers I’d prepared for a hot summer day. That day was today, and I suppose this is motherhood: loving who you are, and preparing, in small and large ways, for who you are becoming.
It is an unbelievable honor to be your mother, to know you, to love you, to be with you every step of your becoming, to entrust your care to those I trust, and to watch you learn to trust in turn.
Thank you for incarnating through me.
I love you,
your mama
Dear Ganga, your words are so meaningful to me. I have a son, about the same age as your son (born december 2022). Listening to you and your child, was so emotional, so recognizable. All I can say is thank you. Lots of love from across the ocean (Belgium).
Rien