I once (and several times since) have said that I wished I didn’t want children as much as I did and do. An easier and more untethered lifestyle. The opportunity to sleep without the silent, ever-scratching voice asking you if your kids are okay.
Google search-
Why do people actually have kids?
xxx
I had a miscarriage when I was 21 at 8 weeks. I stopped smoking cold turkey when I found out, leaving behind a pack-a-day+, 9 year habit. I ate frozen fruit straight from the bag. I didn’t stop bleeding for 6 weeks after. I immediately started smoking again.
Google search-
When do pregnancy craving begin?
xxx
The sack of fluids that carried and swayed my first born managed a small hole at the very top that induced a slow, trickle-leak every time I rolled over in bed. I ended up having to be induced with her and still declined the epidural. The thing is, I don’t think this warrants any do-better accolades the fact of the matter was, and is, that I couldn’t fathom the idea of a needle careening into my spinal cord. Birthing a face-up baby that felt as though my back was surely breaking due to her positioning? Fine. A needle? Absolutely not. I’m no better than a person that chooses an epidural, I am simply a person that requires control and is afraid of needles.
Google search-
How soon after childbirth can you shower?
xxx
There is a photo of Moonie as a newborn in the bathtub with her back squarely pressed into my forearm. She is thin and her eyes are locked directly on mine with an intensity that still strikes me for a baby that has only seen the outside of my body for less than a week. She is as weightless as bird bones. My quiet and sleepy baby was no longer just a “quiet and sleepy baby.” I wailed into the elbow of my grey sweatshirt once I clicked the base of the carseat belonging to my quiet and sleepy baby after leaving a breastfeeding clinic where a nurse softly but firmly looked into my soul and said, “she isn’t just quiet and sleepy. She needs to eat. She doesn’t have the energy to cry.”
Google search-
Can you die from guilt?
xxx
I was stunned by the lack of physical need required of me by my baby. Surely my wildly sensitive self, the one that sustains on physical touch, would birth the kind of child that would need that of me, too. We would meet each other’s needs. I felt shame for wanting and initially feeling as though I needed that from her but it felt too raw to say out loud so instead I relied on humor to mask whatever wound had been opened to bleed out. She wanted to be everywhere except in someone’s arms unless it was post-7 pm and then she would need to sleep on my chest. Her back arching, arms reaching for something, anything other than the confinement of the straps of a carrier or someone else’s hands. She wanted to see and feel and experience it all. She still does.
I marveled and secretly retreated into my own body, disappointed and riddled with he type of postpartum anxiety that echoes over any voice of reason. I pulled away from my husband at night. I wanted to be touched and it wasn’t by him. I would continue to learn her and the opposite end of the sword when I would give birth again 4 years later.
Google search-
How do you know if your baby likes you?
xxx
I don’t dream of my mother very often and when I do I wake up with a sense of panic and fervent searching no matter what the dream was about. I have only had one dream that I can remember my mother seeing and holding my baby, my first born. In my dream she looked the opposite of what I wished she did in a scene like that. She looked the way she did when she died which had become a stranger to me entirely. Her beautiful hands with too many rings and picked-at cuticles were rubbing the side of Moonie’s cheek and she is crying and crying and crying. In my dream it doesn’t feel as though I’m in the same room watching them but rather watching a video from another time and era. A video that wasn’t meant for me.
Google search-
Can ghosts meet your unborn baby before you do?
xxx
I was mothered in community. A byproduct of a teenage, poor mother is the first thing that comes to mind but outside of that, I think my mother had the right idea regardless of what needs she was trying to meet. I slept on couches and listened to the adults in the other room until the wee hours of the morning. I ate egg rolls on her friend’s countertop while listening to Hand Jive and learning the moves. I slept in her mother’s bed despite not really wanting to but knowing there would be cookies in a blue tin waiting for me. I was picked up by neighbors and had sleepovers at other poor, single mother’s apartments- making pallets on the living room floor with too many worn blankets and the occasional sleeping bag. I ate meals I couldn’t pronounce at the kitchen tables of women I barely knew that came in clutch so my mother could go out. I didn’t know them and they barely knew me but I imagine they did what they knew to do, and I did the same. My mother did the same.
I value this more than I can describe these days. Mothering and being mothered in this way. Not desperate, and not lacking but rather inclusive and abundant. I’m not leaving my children with strangers but I seemingly turned out okay.
Google search-
How to tell your kids they can’t have sleepovers
xxx
The day Maddox was born I labored standing up, chest opened to the sky, while bracing down hard on the counter top across the room from my bed. I pushed and coaxed him in a way that felt unproductive, breaking capillaries in my face and chest. Why won’t he come out? I made the kinds of sounds and noises most often associated with animals- guttural and growling. I painfully and silently labored with my first born, and clawed to the ends of the earth with him. I looked feral and wild, my eyes glazed and yet with a focus that I yearn for as a human with ADHD. And then he was just there. I said, there you are, and it was as though nothing more relevant and important and true had ever been said before.
There you are.
Google search-
How can you love two people so much at the same time?
xxx
I found out I had a missed miscarriage at 12 weeks on Moonie’s 3rd birthday. I went to a routine prenatal check-up just before dinner- abandoning my mise en place of diced onion and cilantro and smelled the garlic on my fingers as I drove up the highway. I couldn’t wait to get back to my baby on her birthday with new photos of her new baby. “I can’t find the heartbeat.”
Neither could I.
I named that baby Sunday Jane and I think of that summer often.
Google search-
How long can a baby be dying inside you before their heart stops?
xxx
My mother wore raisin colored lipstick and nail polish and nothing more or less save for the very slight variant in shade. Leaning cranberry during the holidays but only the nails. Softening just a tad to more of a chocolate-cherry in the summer. The smell of compact powder and cigarette smoke and raisin colored lip liner will never remind me of anyone more than it reminds me of my mother. I keep a raisin colored lip pencil in my bag at all times, just in case.
Google search-
What is the most significant of all the senses?
xxx
My relationship with Anaya has illuminated all of the ways we both needed our own mothers, the pieces of mothering that come natural to me, and the parts that trigger me to the point of speaking through my teeth. What I once viewed as codependence, needing or desiring to be parented in some ways by your partner, has since turned into pages of declaration without shame. I need you to show me I’m safe and I’ll do the same for you.
Google search-
Can your partner heal your mother wound?
xxx
I often think about what it is that I wish to be remembered as. No one linear answer or thing but a stream of consciousness similar to this. I hope I mothered in a way that helped to produce the type of human you can call when you need something. I hope to be remembered as a human that was generous and ever-changing. I hope I am remembered for being the type of sensitive that the world bended towards softness for instead of trying to make my skin tougher. I am only recently beginning to admit this to myself, that last line anyways.
Google search-
Can someone be too sensitive?
xxx
The month of May will be dedicated to Mothers in a similar yet round about way as seen above. I am not a play-on-the-floor mother but I am a make-your-favorite-dish-when-you-are-sad type of mother. I made this recipe//non-recipe one evening when I was all out of energy but needed something to nourish both Anaya and I.
It’s a springy, broccoli pasta that reminds me of something akin to buttered noodles or cacio e pepe or carbonara. It’s comforting, satisfying, and stupid easy.
Note: you either love or hate recipe//non-recipes and I think that’s fair. I personally like when other people do this because I feel empowered to riff and make it my own. If you are not as sturdy or confident in the kitchen I understand how these can be intimidating and I assure you that isn’t my intention. I know that “handfuls” vary and I hate when a recipe calls for tablespoons of garlic. Just go with this and I promise I will try to be as directive and descriptive. The good news is that even if there’s slightly less broccoli or somehow more garlic than what I used you are not going to fuck it up, okay?
Broccoli Pasta for 2 (or more?)
Uh, we’re hungry in the evenings, especially this time of year. This is usually because we can be shit at feeding ourselves during the day re: we’re splitting a box of pasta, okay?
8-10 oz dried pasta in any smaller, tubular shape
4 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
1 large head of broccoli, chopped
1 lemon
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Red pepper flake, if you’re so inclined
Fresh herbs- I used parsley but dill would also be nice
Creme fraiche or heavy cream or milk or XYZ
Another veg?! I had some snap peas so I tossed them in. You can too! Or you could add something else, or regular peas, or nothing at all!
Fresh Parmesan cheese
Boil the broccoli for 5 minutes in salted water, remove florets with a slotted spoon re: don’t drain the water, and place in an ice bath for a minute (this preserves the green color and if you don’t give a shit about your broccoli staying super green, skip the ice bath)
Bring the same pot of water back to a boil and cook pasta to al dente, reserving about a cup+ of the pasta/broccoli water
After you reserved some of the water and your pasta is languishing in the strainer in the sink, add a couple tablespoons of olive oil to your pot along with your garlic and red pepper flakes if you’re using, and set it to medium low.
Once the garlic begins sizzling, add your broccoli and begin mashing it with the back of a fork or whatever you want to mash with. Lumps? Cool! Don’t want lumps? Keep mashing! Once your broccoli is mashed to your liking, tossing whatever other veg you’re using if any, and sauce for 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper (I understand this is where people want measurements but this is also why I cannot stress enough to taste your food as you cook), thin with pasta water, add a handful of freshly grated parm, and decide if you want it a bit creamier. A couple splashes of cream or milk? A couple dollops of sour cream or creme fraiche or even greek yogurt? Do you. I put a couple splashes of half & half and before serving a dollop of the creme fraiche that never made it to our wedding.
Add the pasta back in, coating it well with the broccoli (paste?) and once again decide if it needs to be thinned with a bit more pasta water
Zest the lemon and add it directly to the pan, give it a good stir, then add the juice of the lemon and do it again. Toss in whatever herbs you’ve decided to use and once again, toss it all around.
Taste your food and decide if it needs more salt or more acid and if you don’t know, start with a little more lemon since it can be corrected easier (like, with a little more cream) than an over-salted dish.
Dress with more cheese and a few cranks of fresh pepper before serving.
You did it. You even ate a vegetable, maybe two. They were even green.
Biggest love,
AR
Currently Reading: material for Evocative which starts tomorrow! Please feel free to sign-up at the link for this on-going, weekly CNF workshop. Low impact + community-rich
Currently Listening To: the instrumental/classical playlist I created for when I am writing and cannot listen to words
Currently Cooking: we are in the last stretch of legislative session and Anaya will be home late and our kids are with their bio dad. I might make lemon-lilac bars today, I might not. I might eat Nut Thins and hummus for dinner and I might eat a lemon bar if I get around to it, who knows.