a heart black and blue (for mothers)

"There ain't a mother with a heart less than black and blueWhen they hold 'em to the light, you can see right throughEvery dreamer falls asleep in their dancing shoesI may say I don't belong here, but I know I do" - Iron & Wine, "Thomas County Law"

Three years ago, I was sitting in the passenger seat of our car, driving up the highway after my first maternal-fetal medicine ultrasound with my son, Jackson. We drove back holding our hearts in our hands, beating mercilessly with the news, the medical lingo, the printout of three-dimensional photo capture. Jack was missing an eye, Jack's chin measured small, Jack had cleft lip and palate. We kept the silence that seemed the only language we could both speak.Somewhere, I imagined as we drove, there was a country of mothers in fields with beautiful baby bumps and smiles, with easy pregnancies, with children ushered into life with no worry or intubation or surgery or possible threat. "Somewhere, on the far side of other hills", I believed, there was a land I was supposed to reach, a place where motherhood looked the way I had always thought it would, where the aches were always sweet and the tears always tinged with laughter.But how to get there, holding this news, this ultrasound? How to win back that song and join the ones singing?--I began to mother in the NICU, I began to mother in the surgical pre-op, I began to mother with a beast pump and an alarm set for every two hours. I began to mother by untangling my son's wires and reattaching his pulse oximeter. And what of my own wires, those images of what it might have been, me perfectly coiffed and only slightly tired, nursing a baby in the dim hours of the morning? The NICU cut them, quick and to the core, and there I was in a nest of broken wires, old expectations, unfinished images. I still had those ultrasounds creased from living in the pocket of my shorts all summer. I still thought I could hear other mothers singing a song of something that had been taken from me.--There ain't a mother with a heart less than black and blue. Three years later, I hear this line as I'm driving to Target, paused at a stoplight. There is quiet in my car, a rare thing, my son looking out the window and my daughter asleep in her carseat. I am only half listening to the song, but the line pricks at me, and as I pull the car into the road I find that I am crying.There was no other country, there is only this one where all mothers, however they became them, live with a heart black and blue with love, bruised with the work of giving and aching and worrying, the work of cherishing and holding up again and again their children to the light, to see the wonder.Our hearts, wherever they come from, NICU or birthing tub, adoption paperwork or emergency c-section, worn with loss or grief, with worry or hope, measuring doses of baby Tylenol or repositioning a tracheostomy, going to physical therapy or solving another math problem-this list that lives endlessly in us and around us,it has worn our hearts to the same patterns, widened them to the same infinite space, made them translucent when held up to the light.--Three years ago, driving up the highway in that poorly kept silence, I believed I would not belong here, in this country of motherhood. I believed that I had no way to reach or understand mothers whose stories were different. I thought I would be forever separated from them, walking hallways alone, signing consent forms and pumping behind a screen, memorizing the procedure to clean and change a trach tube and a g-button.There ain't a mother with a heart less than black and blue. We all belong, no matter how we began, no matter the shape of our aches or the number of our tears. We all belong, no matter the manner of birth or the length of time we've been at this -our hearts are the same color.Held up the light, we can see right through. We can see each other.Love,hilary

when I meet an old companion

I wake up to my daughter's smile, her face scrunched up in joy in the still-dark room, waiting for me to come and begin the day. My limbs feel unusually heavy, as though the room were made of water and I am trying to stay afloat as I swim towards the crib. I'm just tired, I tell myself, though a thought flickers that this is not an unfamiliar feeling.The sunshine freckles my skin as I plop down on the brown, dead grass of our backyard. It's slowly freckling too, green blades creeping in, as relentless as time itself. The sky is a harshly beautiful blue, my son is laughing and signing to me to "please come here," as he chases the big purple ball I've kicked to the end of the yard. I don't know how to get up and do it again. My daughter is sleeping next to me, her green frog pacifier tucked under her arm. I don't know how I can love them more. I don't know how I can keep moving.I stopped taking my antidepressant almost exactly a year ago, when June had first made her arrival known, the two pink lines greeting me after I washed my hands and already concluded we weren't pregnant. I lived tenderly on the edge for her first 12 weeks, awaiting a resounding hearbeat. I stopped my antidepressant, and as the nausea of weaning off Cymbalta gave way to the nausea of June's furious activity, her cells splitting and replicating and building, I told myself that the chapter was finished.But postpartum depression, I discover, is not a finished chapter of a finished book; it's a thread already bound to a thousand others, it is a stream flowing relentlessly to the river, to the sea. I want my life to come in discrete increments, one at a time, I want the neatness of pages that read only one way, left to right, put behind me once and forever.And somehow every metaphor, every analogy, every image I create when writing this is driven by something like movement, connection, the way that things wind through our lives in predictable and unexpected ways.I'll be honest. Writing this is hard for me. When June was born there was a small seed of triumph that hadn't yet been blown away by the wind. I believed I had conquered depression, even though conquering never felt like the right metaphor. I held my daughter and she breathed slow and lovely against my chest and I thought something was finished with everything she began.But the thread of post-partum depression runs through these days and I follow it into the shower, where I tell God I have nothing left for my children even though it's only 11am and there are hours left to fill. I follow it into the kitchen, where food is like a calculus problem my brain can't solve. I follow it onto the back porch, where the sun is still as warm as ever and my bones don't feel it reach them. And I pray, because I believe in prayer, but I don't know what to ask for. Depression doesn't feel to me like an accidental shadow I need God to rearrange. Depression doesn't seem like a mountain I am asking God to move out of my way so that I can proceed, as if the depression and I were not bound together, and there was a me and a depression and it was simply in my way, a temporary aberration.So I pray for God to give me the ability to swim it, to climb it, to move with and through it. I pray for God to make depression luminous with a light that has already conquered deeper darknesses. I pray for a way to build a bridge that is also a raft that is also a rope that is also a ladder that is also the next metaphor and its answer. I pray for God to make this a place of encounter. I pray for God to show up and accompany me through it, accompany my children and my husband and my friends and those whom my depression touches even in unseen ways.I pray for a fierce friendship with joy, for eyes that wake to a smiling girl and a jumping boy and for muscles that remember these attitudes even when my brain doesn't.This is not a finished chapter, or even a finished blog post. This is a step into the river, a traced outline in a tapestry. There is more to discovered. May Jesus walk into the midst of it.Love,hilary

when this is the mom I am

I am standing on my front porch staring at some random dead bugs on the concrete. Jack is pulling at my hands to go down the stairs into the sun. I don't know where the sunscreen is and I can feel a mosquito biting my ankle. I try to swat it. I slap myself hard on the ankle and the mosquito buzzes away. Jack laughs. We go down the stairs and he immediately runs toward the road. I run after him and he laughs as he sits down on the hot sidewalk to stare at something amazing I can't see, the sun beating down on his blond curls because I have lost the will to strap his head into a hat and I start to think to myself - if someone sees me right now with my kid's head uncovered in this sun what will they think of me? I think about dragging him back inside to find the sunscreen. I should. I really, really should. I should also buy him some sidewalk chalk and maybe a trampoline, because I think good moms have these things to encourage outdoor play. Or was it that I should move to a nearby creek and let him wade in and befriend a local turtle? Or was it that I should put him in a sun-resistant suit of armor before letting him outside? I can't remember. I tell myself that good moms, whoever they are, must be doing something different.--I have been lurking in the shadows of too many well-framed Instagram photos. I have clicked on the links and noted the hashtags. The start of this summer I found myself knee-deep in jealousy - how does she come up with all those games for her kids? How does she look like that every day? How does she have time to do everything? How does she remember to drink enough water and eat the right proteins?--Here is the truth. I forget to drink enough water. I can't come up with a fun game for an almost-2-year-old to save my life even though I spent years babysitting to earn enough money to waste on Tommy Hilfiger-esque purses and wishful-thinking American Eagle tank tops. I see how much fun other moms can make the summer for their kids and I think about things like going to get ice cream sandwiches from a food truck and I do it once and it's 95 with nowhere to sit and Jack protests being taken out of his carseat only to be put back in it because there is no shade and he won't wear a hat and so we go home with melted ice cream and I click on Instagram and somewhere in another part of the world someone's kids are grinning with their ice-cream smeared faces and I spill my ice cream on the only clean shirt I have left.--I became a mother because someone made me one. I became a mother to that someone and that someone looks at me, at the end of the day in between whatever chaos has been made, whatever has been said or not said or whatever games have or haven't been played - that someone looks at me and his face says safety. His face says joy. His face says love.God let me co-create. God let me in on the work of bones and blood and scraped knees and waiting rooms in day surgery. God let me in on the gutsy glory of my son. What else is more important? What food truck or sidewalk-chalk or photo can keep me from believing this?This is the mom I am. The mom who sometimes faints because she probably did forget to hydrate and standing in the sun can overwhelm the body. This is the mom I am. The mom that doesn't know what to play with her kid half the time and reads the same book over and over, and spills ice cream down her shirt and is pretty sure that Daniel Tiger songs will be the only ones she hangs onto by the time she is 90.And my kid's face still says safety and joy and love. He still crawls up in my lap at the end of the day, if I've been working or I've been with him, if I have managed to eat lunch on time or only at 3pm by standing in the kitchen stuffing my face with Goldfish while he listens to "Satisfied" from Hamilton for the 37th time. He still asks for the same song and the same Where do Diggers Sleep at Night? book and when I read it, my voice scratchy and tired, he still smiles at the same places and turns the pages himself.This is the someone who made me a mother. And this is me, his mom.Love,hilary

a story about skin to skin

I got to share some words over at Lisa-Jo Baker's space yesterday- words about mothering, words about what I had expected from my first pregnancy and how everything and nothing changed when Jack made his grand entrance into the world. It's a day late to be posting but of course, the real work of mothering involves convincing a 14-month-old that it really is raining outside (getting into coats and boots and going outside, then crying, then coming inside...).It's a story about the wondrous hard work of mothering. It's a story that you have all helped me write, as you ponder with me this walk into being someone's mom. It's a story you've taught me to see, in all your comments and prayers and well wishes. I know it's been quiet around these parts, but the semester is ending and there is new space carved into my week to write and reflect.I can't wait to walk through it with you.--I spent a year and 20 days grieving an empty five minutes. They were the first minutes of my son’s life, minutes of quick, quiet NICU intervention hidden from me where I lay, bleeding profusely onto the delivery room floor, the doctor remembering three stitches in that she hadn’t in fact given me an anesthetic before starting to sew me back together. They were the five minutes I had once imagined as the moments of transformation, the moments I thought I would become a mother, the moments when I would begin, if there is such a thing as beginning after nine months of pregnancy...Keep reading over at Lisa-Jo's?love,hilary

the new shape of my heart

I cry in the bathroom some mornings when I think other people are just waiting for me to finish brushing my teeth. I stand stock-still at the sink and look at my reflection, touch the skin so effortlessly joined together over my cheekbones, the same place where the doctors will help my son's skin join back together, scar tissue so much stronger than my own.The days are getting warmer, summer bending around the next corner.I smell the lilacs every time I pass them going in and out.--These past few weeks my heart has been stretched tight like the skin across my belly that pulls as my son grows, sometimes what seems like leaps and bounds every day. It has been pulled deep and hard, the same old words repeated: take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid. Words from Jesus, not just for Peter.. My heart has learned that there are fewer words, not more, that should be anchored in us: perhaps only these:Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid.--Jackson kicks often now, insisting on his presence, his being alive. His being, of course, mine and not mine. He pushes at me and sometimes it feels like he is shouting his own annunciation. You are my mom. No one else. And I am your son, no one else, and when I put my hand next to him and there is nothing but skin between us, I know this more than I know anything else:My son is beloved by God. And I must be, too, because God let me wrap my skin and self around him for all these long months of his becoming.On the mornings I freeze in the bathroom, overcome, Jackson still kicks, but more gently. He is brave for me more than I am brave for him.--.I started this post thinking I would talk about the shape of my heart, how it has changed. Then I thought it would be about how grief is a strange, unexpected guest, one that joins you some mornings with the smell of lilacs and toothpaste when you touch your skin and imagine your son. Then I thought it would be about fear, and love, and walking on water.But it is none of those things.It's just a post about my son, who kicks and moves to a music I cannot hear, whose skin will be stronger than my own, who shows me we are both God's beloved.My heart does have a new, surprising shape: the shape of being his mom.Love,hilary

i pray you have a wilder imagination

Dear tiny person, 17 weeks alive now,You will start hearing my voice soon - the sound of my heartbeat, loud and steady, the movement and rhythm of my body in the midst of all the ordinary work of these spring days. And you'll hear Dad's voice, the voices of the people around us, the noises of this life you're coming into.I have been hearing a lot of questions about you. People ask me, "but how will you still be a student?" and "will you quit school?" and "aren't you going to need more time off?" and when I say no, they look at me surprised, a little concerned, a little knowing. They let the silence hang between us, the wide-eyed looks that carry the message across the inches of dusty floor - surely, surely, you didn't think all this was possible. haven't you underestimated how hard it will be? I am praying that you never hear these questions from me.I am praying that when your dad and I hold you, we tell you the stories, again and again, that we are a people who never underestimate anything but the power of the Lord Jesus to walk into our lives and unfold the most surprising, most marvelous, most extraordinary things.Your life is the gift that your dad and I never imagined we would be so privileged to see so soon. Your life is the greatest gift God has given us.I pray that I do not ask you questions that say your imagination is too unrealistic. That you can't possibly think you can do this and that at the same time, that you are underestimating how hard it will be, how much work it will be, how likely it is to fall apart.I pray that you will hear me say instead that our imaginations should be wider, and wilder. I pray you will hear what I know in my bones, that we too often live limited lives because we limit our imaginations. We think that motherhood and philosophy graduate seminars can't possibly both be successful; we think that you must choose between art and biology; we think that you cannot travel AND or be married AND or work this challenging job AND or ...and we teach this to each other, with our well-meaning questions and our expectant looks, with our heartfelt, "but how will that work?" Our imaginations grow small in the shadow of what we think more realistic.I pray that your imagination is wilder than that. I pray that you hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, who will call you to get out of the boat, to leave behind what you know, to go into towns and cities, to leave the empty tomb with just the wild hope and these words: "I have seen the Lord!"I pray you know that this is enough reason to rejoice in even what seems difficult or strange in the eyes of the world. It might not satisfy other people. And right now when I put my hand over the place where I know you're growing, and I tell those who ask me these questions that I am not afraid to be a student and a mother, to be a wife and a philosopher and to hold you in the long nights and read to you about epistemology and the Rainbow Fish -when I do this, it probably doesn't satisfy the person who asked me.But if it does not - if the question still lingers, how can she think all this is possible, then I dare them all to take that question and place it before the Lord Jesus. I believe Jesus will widen their imagination. I believe that Jesus will remind them of the stories:Abraham, who left everything he knew to follow God,Moses and the people of Israel, who followed God into the water of the Red Sea and walked safely,Ruth, who left everything she knew to go with Naomi,Hannah, who did not leave God alone in praying for her son,Mary, who gave birth to God Himself in Jesus,Peter, who got out of the boat, and even when he doubted, cried out and Jesus saved him immediately,of the people Jesus healed, and ate with, whose faith, whose wild imagination carried them into the very heart of God.And I believe that you, and me, and Dad, we are one story numbered among the thousands that Jesus tells about those who love Him. They are all stories of wilder imagination. They are stories of people who love, and this love, it casts out their fears, their idea of limits, their idea of what will be too hard and too much and so hard to imagine how it will all work. And so, beautiful, breathtaking tiny human being listening to my heartbeat, I pray that you are filled up all these many years with a wild imagination. I pray that you feel these stories around you, in your bones. I pray that you know most of all that God loves you, wildly, beyond your imagining - and when God calls out to you, you need never fear - it is His love, calling you to Himself.Love,mom

to the moms

Dear moms,I'm lying in bed sick with what feels suspiciously like strep throat - a raw ring of red across the back of my throat, a headache that wraps around the back on my neck... all the usual symptoms. I woke up this morning whimpering in a small voice for my mom, for a cup of tea and a hug. My eyes were full of tears, from the feverish dreams, from the tired, from the need to be taken care of. And my mom, she cracked open the door and smiled at me, the smile of understanding that promises a cup of pomegranate green tea and a long hug and a forever kind of love.I don't know how often you get a thank you note for what you do.I don't know if there are good words for it. You see, I want to be a mom. I drive through the long winter afternoons and I wonder about making a home and a family, of learning how to rock a baby to sleep with one song on repeat, how to color with a toddler and how to bake cookies with a seven year old girl who doesn't feel accepted by her friends at school. I dream about that unglamorous life. I imagine how it will weary my bones the way it has wearied you, and how beautiful it has made you.I see you as marvelously beautiful. My mom is, I know that. My mom makes room in her bed for me when I'm sick. She hugs and kisses me when I come home, makes me a cup of tea or a bit of toast, just because she knows that I am lying in my bed sick and sad. She tells me jokes, bad dating stories when I'm lonely. My mom surrounds me on every side with grace and courage.You do that, too. You in the unglamorous life, you are beautiful in your 1am new mom outfit. You are beautiful in bringing chicken noodle soup to your sick kids. You are beautiful folding laundry and watching cartoons and desperately coaxing gum out of someone's hair with peanut butter.I want to say thank you for pouring out so much love onto your kids. When it's difficult. When we yell. When we are ungrateful. When we push against you and demand too much and don't know how to be grown ups and when we do selfish, stupid things. Thank you for pouring so much love out on us that we are surrounded on every side by it.Thank you for holding us tight when we're sick. Thank you for building a nest for us. I am going to guess that the twenty-somethings I know and love, we all have complicated moments. We are grown ups and yet young. We are trying too hard and not hard enough. We don't know where the future will lead us, and we trip over ourselves sometimes.But as we have fumbled, I don't want you to think we forget. We don't forget that you make a nest for us. We don't forget that we are safe in your heart. We don't forget that, for all our fumbling, you trust us to become something wondrous.So thank you, from all of us, for the years and years you poured out love. Thank you, from all of us, for the sick days and the cranky days and the art projects and the road trips. Thank you, from all of us, for that wondrous love.I hope and pray that someday, we'll sit down and share stories about that wondrous love.Love,hilary