God doesn't want you to kill babies and neither does your 10-year-old step-son. That's what he tells you when you are headed west on Lombard street, in the sleeting rain, in the steady gray, in the impenetrable monochrome of a Portland winter.
I am in the middle of a sentence when he says this. I am suddenly stuck on repeat. I try and begin my sentence over and over again and all I hear is, "Kate, stop killing babies." My husband glances over from the driver's seat. My step-son begins humming.
I remember saying things at ten like "Dad, you don't have a singing voice," just because I knew that he felt vulnerable about it. I wasn't trying to be mean, I just saw a soft spot and pushed to see what would happen. I remember feeling excitement mixed with dread and regret. I remember not meaning it, just watching to see what would happen. Would he cry? Would I get in trouble?
When I hear this, I don't immediately say anything to Micheal. I give my husband a slight nod to indicate that I am fine, but my eyes well up with tears. "Kate, stop killing babies," I hear it again in my mind.
Micheal is dealing with my miscarriage in his own way. Maybe he's angry with me. He was on his way to being an older brother when I lost the baby. When we told him about the pregnancy, he had spent weeks singing and dancing. He had been effervescent. We were becoming a family on a new level, and everything between the three of us felt different. It was made all the more special for Micheal because the baby's due date was the same day as his birthday. In his mind they were twinned.
Realizing where we are, I remember the billboard we have so often passed so I say, "Oh, did you see that billboard? The one that says, 'Stop killing babies"--God'?" For a brief, unmistakable moment, I hate the Christians ferociously. We'd passed the billboard many times and even commented on it, Micheal and I talking about what it meant and why it would be posted for the public to see.
"Yes," he replies, and then says it again, "Kate, stop killing babies, God." Maybe he laughs a little.
I nod,"Mhmmm...., that's a funny billboard, huh?"
It's hard not to leap to my own defense, about how I loved that child and didn't have a choice. But I don't. This is Micheal's moment, a moment in which he is articulating some sense of loss, his loss. To overshadow it with more explanation of the love we had for the baby, for the inevitable and irreparable moment in which we lost her is not the point, so I remain quiet.
My tears are quiet too. They keep coming. I look out the window. The Satin Sugar silo, solid and white, is glowing eerily in the gray light. The railroad cars are standing in sendentary queue, cold and remote.
We each sit quietly for a while, making our separate ways through this.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Fever 103
I, too, am a Mollusk
like you,
ship-shape and hard,
twisted in liquid sheets,
damp and turning
in slow,
dark, revolutions
in slow,
dark, revolutions
Spine to the outside
gripping mitts
and a
forgotten tail.
We, two, identical,
dreaming in blood-rhythm,
in a phlegm house,
Little squire
Little purpose
Little squatter
In your crimson
World float,
Turn the wheel
of that
Hard dream.
I, to the sea
You, to the land.
Me, pushing off
You, sinking in.
We are a love-
knot,
intertidal,
two old species,
fossils pressed
into slick
stone
geologic crush and melt
geologic crush and melt
shoving off
toward the
soft
promise
soft
promise
of Matter
Letter to a Lost Child
You, tiny perfect puncher,
Little softness
Riding around
My ribs middle
Lowing to my insides
Keening and flexing.
I remember you
Soft as you were
Like a love note to my life
Little wonder
Bright day
Sudden star
So short
Your insistent
Pedaling toward
Me
And mine to you
Through the
Curtain of flesh and fluid.
Never doubt I wanted you.
Knew you somehow
As if out of a dream.
A cloudshape I couldn’t
Quite catch, or see.
Until there was nothing left
But burning between
My legs, those strobing lights
And the surgeon’s congealed
Clicking.
First Trimester
Crustacean,
Caddis,
Fossil,
What husk will you make
For form to take?
What robust shape?
The sky splits for you
And pours,
Dendritic branches mount and shake.
Little life,
Budding into eyelet
Vein, and tidy hemisphere
How hot is your
Heart?
How white your heat?
How will you greet the
Spindle of
Light that brightens your eye,
Light that brightens your eye,
Makes your fingers separate
And flex? Are you husk enough
Without
Creative flaw?
Will the bright timing
And the soft wanting be
Invitation enough?
Unnamable,
Gather and float, easy,
Work, You Fish,
You Mollusk ,
You Shard,
Make a sturdy house.
Fill it with light.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Snowflakes
My stepson, Micheal (pronounced ME-Hall), and I are cutting out snowflakes. It is December 22nd and outside there is no real snow. Four days ago I was pregnant and now I am not. My baby miscarried and I am trying to carry on. So Macker and I make snowflakes; we decorate the tree; listen to Christmas carols on the radio.
Portland is soft this afternoon, almost balmy and dry. The persimmons on the tree, in September so vibrant, are now ashen on the limbs. My garden is a briar-y tangle; the rhubarb stalks yellow, melting into the soft soil; the tomato plants are reduced to greying sticks stiffly moving in the breeze. Micheal and I work quietly using old blueprints his father has put aside for me to use for artwork. We snip quietly, concentrating. Micheal is attempting to make the world's smallest snowflake. He is working so hard he has forgotten to breathe and he lets out a hot breath and looks at me, flushed.
I am trying to remember how to make paper snowflakes. Micheal looks up at me and suggests I cut the corners to make it look less like a square. Diligently, I take his advice wishing my scissors were sharper as I cut away thick sections of the folded paper.
I am snipping away confidently, when all of a sudden, I realize I may have made an irreparable error: Shit, I think, I've cut the middle out of it! Carefully, I unfold the paper to assess the damage. As I open it, I see that there is no center to my snowflake. I hold it up, and stare at the gap I have created at the snowflake's center. I push my finger through the empty space and mean to say, "Look the middle is gone," but instead I hear myself saying to Micheal, "Look, the baby's gone."
For one awful moment, we look at each other, both disbelieving the words that I have spoken, baffled by my mistake. And then, because there is nothing else to do, we start laughing.
"You are addicted to that baby," Micheal says to me.
Portland is soft this afternoon, almost balmy and dry. The persimmons on the tree, in September so vibrant, are now ashen on the limbs. My garden is a briar-y tangle; the rhubarb stalks yellow, melting into the soft soil; the tomato plants are reduced to greying sticks stiffly moving in the breeze. Micheal and I work quietly using old blueprints his father has put aside for me to use for artwork. We snip quietly, concentrating. Micheal is attempting to make the world's smallest snowflake. He is working so hard he has forgotten to breathe and he lets out a hot breath and looks at me, flushed.
I am trying to remember how to make paper snowflakes. Micheal looks up at me and suggests I cut the corners to make it look less like a square. Diligently, I take his advice wishing my scissors were sharper as I cut away thick sections of the folded paper.
I am snipping away confidently, when all of a sudden, I realize I may have made an irreparable error: Shit, I think, I've cut the middle out of it! Carefully, I unfold the paper to assess the damage. As I open it, I see that there is no center to my snowflake. I hold it up, and stare at the gap I have created at the snowflake's center. I push my finger through the empty space and mean to say, "Look the middle is gone," but instead I hear myself saying to Micheal, "Look, the baby's gone."
For one awful moment, we look at each other, both disbelieving the words that I have spoken, baffled by my mistake. And then, because there is nothing else to do, we start laughing.
"You are addicted to that baby," Micheal says to me.
The Quiet Aftermath of Loss
This poem by Emily Dickinson has been coming to me the last few days... After great pain a formal feeling comes-- The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs; The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore? And yesterday--or centuries before?The feet, mechanical, go round A wooden way Of ground, or air, or ought, Regardless grown, A quartz contentment, like a stone. This is the hour of lead Remembered if outlived, As freezing persons recollect the snow-- First chill, then stupor, then the letting go. Emily Dickinson |
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Becoming a Parent
Last weekend I lost a baby. I barely knew her, she was that young--17 weeks in the making and, as far as I knew, perfect. Her little heart had been drumming away on the Thursday afternoon ultrasound and on Friday, before the blue silence if the night was broken by morning birds, the aqueous world that surrounded that little life flushed forth. Her world was lost, and soon, she was lost to me.
She was the first child of my body, but the second to whom I have applied the word "parent". In the case of the first, I do so flexibly, because the boy I am helping to raise is not mine through birthright or blood. He is my husband's son. I am his stepmother. With his help, I am coming to know myself in a new way. I am learning to define and redefine the term "Stepmother" as it is a word and a character, often and easily, vilified.
The role of stepmother is as old as the human family, as old as death, as old as birth. We are the Other Mother, the Never Mother, the Interloper, the Replacement, the Understudy, the Second. We are charged with raising children who are not our own while subject to cultural, historical, personal, and evolutionary factors all of which seem to play a part in the complex enactment of this strange and somewhat ambiguous position.
At midnight tonight I will turn thirty-five. I have known my stepson now for three years, a period of time during which I have examined and observed, questioned, lamented, and exalted the role of stepmothers. It's a weird and natural history, one which has played a large role in my life as I have been both privileged and cursed by having had no less than three stepmothers myself. I have also had two stepfathers, or more accurately, one stepfather and another, rather difficult man, I use to refer to as, "the man my mother married."
As one might imagine, I have become a student of the blended family dynamic, and particularly, of the step-parent.
I have found that if you ask most people about step-parents, the stories are generally negative. When I entered into the role three years ago I began to ask questions at dinner parties, potlucks, and other social events about other peoples' experience of step-parents. I wanted to hear stories that might challenge my assumptions, and broaden my understanding of those people we call "Step". I incorrectly anticipated that I would come across a variety of thoughts and feelings expressed by people pertaining to their step-parents, that the spectrum would be large and include huge affections as well as great strain. I was mostly wrong. The majority of people I spoke with remember their step-parents with a mixture of resignation and resentment. I encountered very few positive stories. There were, of course, exceptions, but these were, by far, in the minority.
It was then that I realized, more deeply, the work that lies ahead of me if I am to redefine and take ownership of this new role. This collection of essays is an exploration of Natural History of Step-parents, but particularly of Stepmothers. It will examine the stories we have heard growing up, the science of territory, blood, hierarchy, and family, as well as take a close look at the history and significance of Stepmothers. It is also a record of my experiences, my blunders, epiphanies, experiments, ruminations, and lessons.
She was the first child of my body, but the second to whom I have applied the word "parent". In the case of the first, I do so flexibly, because the boy I am helping to raise is not mine through birthright or blood. He is my husband's son. I am his stepmother. With his help, I am coming to know myself in a new way. I am learning to define and redefine the term "Stepmother" as it is a word and a character, often and easily, vilified.
The role of stepmother is as old as the human family, as old as death, as old as birth. We are the Other Mother, the Never Mother, the Interloper, the Replacement, the Understudy, the Second. We are charged with raising children who are not our own while subject to cultural, historical, personal, and evolutionary factors all of which seem to play a part in the complex enactment of this strange and somewhat ambiguous position.
At midnight tonight I will turn thirty-five. I have known my stepson now for three years, a period of time during which I have examined and observed, questioned, lamented, and exalted the role of stepmothers. It's a weird and natural history, one which has played a large role in my life as I have been both privileged and cursed by having had no less than three stepmothers myself. I have also had two stepfathers, or more accurately, one stepfather and another, rather difficult man, I use to refer to as, "the man my mother married."
As one might imagine, I have become a student of the blended family dynamic, and particularly, of the step-parent.
I have found that if you ask most people about step-parents, the stories are generally negative. When I entered into the role three years ago I began to ask questions at dinner parties, potlucks, and other social events about other peoples' experience of step-parents. I wanted to hear stories that might challenge my assumptions, and broaden my understanding of those people we call "Step". I incorrectly anticipated that I would come across a variety of thoughts and feelings expressed by people pertaining to their step-parents, that the spectrum would be large and include huge affections as well as great strain. I was mostly wrong. The majority of people I spoke with remember their step-parents with a mixture of resignation and resentment. I encountered very few positive stories. There were, of course, exceptions, but these were, by far, in the minority.
It was then that I realized, more deeply, the work that lies ahead of me if I am to redefine and take ownership of this new role. This collection of essays is an exploration of Natural History of Step-parents, but particularly of Stepmothers. It will examine the stories we have heard growing up, the science of territory, blood, hierarchy, and family, as well as take a close look at the history and significance of Stepmothers. It is also a record of my experiences, my blunders, epiphanies, experiments, ruminations, and lessons.
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