Remembering.
Everything changes after a baby is born. This is what everyone told her. Her mother had told her everything, but—she would come to understand—there is nothing that can be said to fully prepare a woman for the ways her existence is altered. It wasn’t until you left the hospital and realized you were alone that the surprising pleasure wore off and the fear set in.
It was, of course, more than the physical (and easily identifiable, easily explainable) symptoms contributing to the lethargy that led, at times, to despondency. Even during the times when she wasn’t fearing the uncertain future, or lamenting an irretrievable past, she grappled with the reality that motherhood—being alone each day with a child—was capable of inducing frustration and anxiety she had never previously felt. She understood, and accepted that her husband had to leave early each morning for the job that provided the immutable necessities of shelter, sustenance, and security. She was nevertheless unable to entirely suppress resentment at being alone so much.
Housewife. The term too often uttered by men (and unwed women) with denigration, and ignorance. So what? Well, to acknowledge that the routine of feeding, cleaning and tending to a baby could occasionally be tiresome to the point of exasperation was to, in effect, admit negligence, or defeat. It was all but impossible for a woman to express how terribly afraid, and even angry, she could become as she looked down helplessly at a child, unable to determine why it was screeching. The ceaseless concern for the welfare of the baby (who depended entirely upon you for its innocent life) was capable of provoking an agitation that seemed uncomfortably close to hysteria. Nothing could prepare a woman for this, and even a mother who was experiencing the dread and despair—and feelings of inadequacy—was usually at a loss to articulate her consternation. This is what she read. This is what she lived.
Postpartum depression. Her mother had experienced similar symptoms after the birth of her first child. It’s very common: this is what the doctor told her. This is what her husband constantly reminded her. It was what she repeatedly said to herself. Unfortunately, to her way of thinking, this knowledge only amplified her distress. If she was back east, with familiar faces, with family, she was sure all of this would be more tolerable. Being housebound, or in the slow process of physical recovery, would have been different propositions if she had her parents to take care of her, even as she tended to her newborn daughter. As it was, she was largely alone with her thoughts and feelings. And that she occasionally caught herself entertaining irrational thoughts in her solitude that left her terrified. She was loath to admit, even to herself, that in flashes of frustration she visualized drastic and awful acts: she sometimes had to force away the maddening impulse to take her own life, or do harm to the tiny, trusting baby that lay before her. That she was even able to think such thoughts intensified her feelings of guilt and culpability. She began gradually to suspect the worst possible conclusion: that she was not a suitable wife, or mother.
***
I don’t know if I can do it, she’d say to herself on the worst days. How did this happen? How did I get here? Where am I going?
“I don’t know if I can do it,” she said to her mother, again. Feeling guilty, again. Guilty about how she felt. Guilty about the long distance charges. Guilty because she felt guilty.
“Of course you can,” her mother said, again. “You’re already doing it.”
Her mother reminded her, again, how much help she had provided, being the oldest of seven. Her mother reminded her that every mother thinks similar thoughts, and that only the ones who genuinely questioned their abilities were fully engaged with what they were doing. Her mother reminded her it would get easier. It would get better. It would get enjoyable. Her mother told her that one day her own daughter would have kids and she would tell her the same things. Her mother promised her that they would laugh about this, often, as they each adjusted to their new roles once they added grand and great to the names their children’s children called them.
***
Eventually, she no longer woke up crying each morning, and she made the gradual transition into comfortable—and confident— motherhood. It was during this time—the first year of her daughter’s life—that she underwent the transfiguration from young lady to woman. She recognized and learned to celebrate this identity, her destiny. She was—and would be—a housewife, and after a while, even that once unbecoming designation was one she embraced, and endeavored to contend with, without reservation. It was, she realized, her house, the dinners prepared were her meals, and the personality that the apartment was to take on would be the reflection of her personality.
During these initial years of dedication and resolution, it never occurred to her in any direct or pressing fashion that a time would one day come when she’d cease to be a mother (at least in the same way she had been for the first two decades of her children’s lives). This was not unnatural: her focus was not unlike her husband’s, whose reality was in large part informed by his career. But just as an employee eventually becomes cognizant—on some level—that retirement is inevitable, if desired, a mother is understandably less inclined to envision how her primary role will one day be irrevocably altered.
***
And then, one day, your children have grown up and moved out of the house. Just as you can’t imagine your life—and the ways it will change—before you have them, it’s impossible to adequately prepare for how it will feel once they are gone. Of course they aren’t gone, you remind yourself, even as you deal with your parents’ mortality and your own, accepting that nothing lasts forever.
Of course she was happy: for them, for herself. She was also sad. She was even, if she could bring herself to admit it (and she could, on occasion), more than a little jealous. She could admit it; she wanted to admit it. She needed someone—besides her husband—to talk to, a role her mother, and increasingly, her children, had served. Someone to talk to about the things she could never talk to anyone else about. Of course they are still around, she reminded herself, but she needed to let them go just as she had once let them cry themselves to sleep. It was the ultimate act of love, allowing children to learn ways they can take care of themselves.
There were three pictures above the fireplace: her wedding, her daughter’s wedding and her son’s high school graduation. So many of her friends’ marriages had ended in divorce, even the marriages she had admired and envied. So many of her friends’ children required separate sets of photographs for special occasions. They had done it, she reminded herself. They lived up to every reasonable expectation, for their children, for themselves. This was a comfort, even if it also caused an indescribable sorrow at times. Nothing lasts forever.
There was a new question, now that all the old questions had more or less been answered, she could not help asking, even if she was uncertain how to answer it: Now what?
*excerpted from a memoir entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone.
