My son Ezra, my first child, turns 3 months old this week. During pregnancy and postpartum, I felt really inarticulate. I struggled to describe how I was feeling to family and friends, and to myself. It's difficult to put such a novel, layered, and awesome experience into words, plus the hormones made me a bit ditsy. The psychological impact of the pandemic and my dad dying unexpectedly during my third trimester also contributed, I think, to the feeling of my brain not working properly.
After the birth, I'd get little moments of clarity, when sentences formed in my mind that decently conveyed this or that aspect of my experience as a new mother. Usually it happened when I was in the shower or driving. I started collecting these sentences in a draft email on my phone, and it became a sort of postpartum journal. On the occasion of Ezzy’s 3-month birthday, and the end of my "fourth trimester," I'd like to share some of what I've written:
I vacillate between brimming with love and feeling hollow. Maybe it's just the lack of studio time.
Growing up, I absorbed the unfortunate myth that moms couldn't be real artists. In actuality, having a baby has expanded my range of feeling and given me more to draw from in the studio. It's put me in touch with a very deep and primal part of myself. My art is fed by my experiences in life, and what could possibly be a more powerful experience than birthing and raising a human being? I cherish a conversation from 4 or 5 years ago with one of my favorite musicians--she's a friend of Eric's and was staying at our place after a gig in Philly. Standing in the kitchen with our mugs of morning coffee, we talked about life and art, and I asked her how becoming a mom affected her practice. She said that it can slow you down but ultimately makes the work richer.
6 weeks postpartum, I realize that I can lie on my stomach again. It feels delicious. You can't lie on your stomach when you're pregnant. And afterward, my breasts were too painful from engorgement and clogged ducts, my nipples like open sores. I remember in the shower having to hold my hands like awnings over them, shielding them from the pelting water. During the day I'd find myself walking around hunched, curling my back out of self-protective instinct.
I didn't realize what it meant to have my body to myself until after I'd shared it for 10 months with my son. (It's hard to appreciate something you've never lost.) When I quit breastfeeding, it was liberating.
It hits me in waves--the magnitude of it. I have a son. Not just a change to my daily tasks, but a son.
I imagined that the love would feel large. Mostly it just feels deep, like it comes from deep within my body.
Today I took my first bath since being pregnant. As I lowered myself in the water, an unexpected sadness touched me--where I used to see a taught and round stomach, now it was deflated, un-special. I felt alone, too. I was used to sharing baths with Ezzy. He'd hunch up by my ribs, startled by the heat, and I'd watch him play under my skin while I soaked.
Having a baby is both the most miraculous thing and the most ordinary. It's a revelation when, at the grocery store, I realize that most of the women around me have probably done it, too. There's something strange about how we're all dealing or have dealt with this huge thing so silently and separately.
Near my house, there's a nice trail that follows a stretch of Darby Creek. Like most of the green spaces in and around Lansdowne, it's pretty wild, minimally manicured. I used to think it was a scrappy and underfunded look, but recently I appreciate it more. I've been taking Ezzy on walks to a little waterfall along the trail. Today he started to fuss when we got there, so I took him out of the stroller, sat on a rocky ledge in the shade, and held him so that he could see the waterfall. I rocked him and pointed out water, rocks, plants and dirt. I know he won't remember the moment, but maybe one day he'll associate being in nature with the feeling of being held. The cynic in me wants him to have an experience of nature before it's annihilated by human greed and stupidity. But mostly I'm just trying to instill in him a love and enjoyment for the things I love and enjoy. We also water the garden together most mornings, him strapped to my chest and snoring while I hum little songs and tell him the names of the plants. I want him to value the natural world. I'm trying to raise him to be conscientious of the different species he shares the planet with.
Today was my first day back in the studio. I've done little things over the past three months (collage studies, surface prep, some small drawing commissions), but this was my first day closing the studio door for a block of hours to really paint. When I came downstairs to reheat my coffee, I stopped by the living room to say hi to Ezzy. He was perfectly content, playing on his mat under Eric's watch. It felt like I was greeting him for the first time as myself. I felt the transition, from "you are my life" to "you are part of my life," like switching gears on a bike. It felt new, but right, like things clicking into their proper place.
A therapist recently told me that leaving my career behind to raise my children wouldn't make me valorous or win me any points. It was freeing to hear. I simply need to work , and I’d prefer to not feel guilty for it. Having a child didn't change the core of who I am, didn't diminish or displace my identity as an artist. Ezzy's just layered into it now, an added ingredient flowing through my veins.