Post Post-Partum Post

Walking in East Harlem today, summer Fahrenheit beginning to assert in the city mix, the uptick from air conditioner exhaust... a young mother with one baby in her arms, another at her side tugs at her tank and points toward a bakery.  'Did I tell you to shut your mouth?' and she whacks him-- hard... across his ear... his little face scrunching into a silent wince, tear-tracks clearing a clean line down cheeks stained with a long-day's soot and play-dirt...

Babies are little heat-machines... any woman who's carried inside or outside well appreciates the relief a stroller allows, cumbersome as they can be on public transportation.  And children are simply overwhelming-- especially when echoes of your old carefree life creep in like passing car-music-- some 5-inch heels you crave in a store-window... your baby-daddy taking just a little more time to pick up the Happy Meals...  and all new mothers know the shock of cataclysmic hormonal changes--  swimming in estrogen as you are during pregnancy, small issues ride over you like candy... but suddenly you are sweaty and cranky and exhausted and your front door feels like a prison gate.

I noticed this week Alanis Morissette doing the talk-show rounds-- maybe some promo for a coming album... proudly pregnant and bringing her rock-star confessions about post-natal depression.  The Queen of TMI whose well-produced radio-ready emotional cries occupied a generous portion of the 90's airwaves... now the spokeswoman of depressed new mothers.  Who else--Cardi B?  Brooke Shields a few years back?  The society of botoxed, fashion-elitist, nannied, chauffeured, and all-around privileged-- now earning talk-show and book-income as conflicted mothers.   Somehow this high-profile whining doesn't move me.  Even Khloe Kardashian, publicly humiliated by the father of her new baby-- deals with billionaire motherhood.  I salute you, Khloe-- victim of the same insulting behavior so many of us have passed through.  You are a role model.   But my hot friend today with the two babies and God-knows how many at home has no glam squad.  What she does have is food stamps and a place to live in the Projects, unlike some.  What she does not have is help.  Tutelage.  Someone to listen to her. NEI (Not Enough Information).

When I had my son I was already 36.  My career had taken a positive turn-- my record was doing well in the UK-- I had a huge deal on the table-- and then I found myself pregnant-- unplanned, unwarned... with a young husband who pleaded and begged and promised to become the Mister Mom every working woman dreams about.  Okay.  I toured-- I performed-- I wrote, I signed deals, made promises.  The baby came-- my husband, as was his custom, was drinking heavily.  The doctor threw him out of the delivery room and I met my son for the first time as I was to live most of his childhood-- alone.

Okay... many, many dramatic episodes as only the finest British actors can play them... in and out, drunk and sober, on his knees, on planes, on telephones-- with and without flowers... and I found myself back in New York with a baby-- the ultimate heaven-blessed gift of nature-- a healthy, perfect, adorable little boy-- and a heart-splitting slam of psychological claustrophobia that felt like a perpetual car-crash.  Unwilling to share with anyone this sense of abandonment-- failure-- inverted joy, whatever... I wandered the streets of my neighborhood at night with my stroller-- up and down-- in and out of 24-hour stores with my little sleeping bundle... trying to walk myself into exhaustion... but when I returned home, I couldn't lie down--- I couldn't listen to records-- it was too memory-soaked-- or even watch television-- it was like being assaulted.  Reading was impossible-- when it rained I'd talk on the telephone, or move us up to the laundry room where I'd count headlights on the wet asphalt outside and wish I was a passenger.

One night I was so exhausted I was maybe hallucinating, worrying I'd neglect some crucial baby-caring task-- and I wheeled us into a Mental Health clinic.  I need to see someone, I said.  The intake process was weeks.  I am not going to make three weeks, I announced, and while a nurse carefully lifted the baby into competent arms, they sent me upstairs to the facility director who told me he thought my thyroid was completely out of whack.  The diagnosis-- an educated stab in the dark and a kind of pretext-- gave me a little relief... and just confessing to this stereotypical Psychiatric Neurobiologist with a bowtie and a theory... was therapeutic.

What they did not diagnose then was this postpartum depression or postnatal or whatever biological or emotional havoc these things wreak on women.  Coupled with my missing husband and a disintegrating marriage, an abrupt change of lifestyle-- I was used to playing in clubs, hanging out until dawn--- wilding and feeling like an uncaged animal.  Or after breakups-- tough days--- you'd go out to a bar, listen to other people's issues, drink surrounded by good music and flirt a little with a cute bartender who reassured you the future was going to be so much better than the present.

I survived... no meds, no prescriptions--- a few sessions with a therapist while a nice intern played with the baby through a glass door... and of course I never had the urge to hurt my child... I loved him all the more, never drank, never left him even for a second-- I nursed my own wounds and failures into a scar of motherly fortitude and managed somehow, through free clinics, $1 bags of doughnuts, and Goodwill stores, to get through the challenges of babyhood.  Yes, Alanis.  No herbs or oils or mountain retreats.

So I am less sympathetic to the whining celebrities on television-- with their perfect makeup and clothing, looking like cover plates and talking about their tough life... while a gorgeous husband, a team of nannies and assistants waits at home with a clean bathroom, freshly washed crib linens and perfectly mashed organic baby food.  Walls of sympathy for Beyonce and Cardi B-- more than I earn in a year for an appearance to raise awareness of this syndrome.  Did my mother and grandmother not suffer?  Surely this is not new--- what is new are the meds and treatments which earn some people money.  The public whining-- the celebrity confessionality which fuels Instagram and social media like nothing else.  Tiny tragedies-- nothing bloody or gory... just infidelities, rehabs, breakdowns-- that kind of thing.  A little postpartum retrospective, to give some credibility to the perfect image.

Motherhood is hard; single parenthood is long and relentless.  Even when you are sick, there is no relief.  And when something wonderful happens, there is no one who claps their hands with you.  I was a mature woman.  I had no money, nor public assistance, but I had some experience.  For these young unprepared girls without role models there is little comfort.  They have traded their girlhood and their freedom for a dream of family that mostly deteriorates with time.  Every day we hear about abandoned children, hurt and abused children.  I try to understand the sorrows of the mothers-- not to condemn them.  There is help, but not really.  You are in this or you are not.  God save the society that disallows abortions and thereby fails to protect children from suffering future neglect.  I know very few women who have not made these difficult choices, in favor of a life.

It is Pride weekend.  When my baby was young, a gay couple moved in down the hall from me.  They were very handsome and very much in love but withering and sick with AIDS.  They were also so kind and loving... they loved the baby so much and came often in their pajamas just to hold him.  One died and the other threw himself off the balcony; I missed seeing this by seconds... but I will remember them especially on Sunday... two men who somehow empathically understood my mothery loneliness-- they embraced me with the baby and the future they would never have, shunned by their families, but enviably with one another in an eternal bond... they healed me like nothing else, and I cared for them as I could, in vain.  I cannot write this song... and my son is a grown man now.  Even the memory of my sadness has a kind of nostalgic sweetness that never shows in those baby photos.  And unlike the little boy who was slapped today, my son never had to worry that it was his fault... that he was wrong... in any way... because he was just so 'right'... and that is a blessing.  Amen.

Waiting

When I was in grade school I couldn't wait to be 10.  Something about the double-digit thing, the way it looked-- it seemed perfect.  I knew everything would be amazing when I turned 10.  At 10, the world did improve for me; I discovered rock and roll.  I had my first cigarette; just holding it and watching it burn slowly was a coming-of-age thrill.  My legs were disproportionately long; I didn't really appreciate my attributes, although boys asked me to dance and even kissed me.   I desperately longed for braces on my teeth; I thought they would make me look older.

Boys required patience.  Crushes were painful and took weeks to cultivate.  A nervous exchange prefaced another long wait-- by the telephone, where there was little privacy and sibling competition.
Sometimes you'd have to wait a whole summer to talk to your young paramour.  He might send a postcard and even the stamp would be magical.

These days love requires less waiting; texting has telescoped the space between us, and made some relationships cheaper.  The waiting, contrary to the song, is not really the hardest part, but the best, in a way.  We have forfeited this luxury of time in the interest of convenience.

Yesterday I was in a funk and walked up through East Harlem, as I often do when I want to blend into the local population.  Daylight hours uptown mostly mothers and young children are on the streets-- also the disabled and non-working.  It always seems there are so many more wheelchairs and amputees there.  A man I often see hangs out on 104th Street;  he is handsome, but has no legs.  Sometimes he is eating.  I wonder if he needs help to use the bathroom… he is waiting, patiently, for someone to come home, for his helper-- a wife, a son or daughter.  He doesn't wave.  Dogs wait patiently in the tenements for their owners to come home.  I walk-- wait on lines, still without a phone, so I can feel time.  I sense the miles up and back, the chatter and the music from open windows, the Mexican vs. Puerto Rican accent and style-- grown men in costumes of sports celebrities, women in loose colorful clothing.  At the grocery store they call me Mami and tell me to Vaya con Dios.  They don't care how I am dressed.  I walk through the Meer and there are men on benches smoking and sitting.  Some of them fish.  I always think of the Old Man and the Sea.  Some of them have dogs who sit patiently beside them, waiting.

Passing the hospital, there are people in the blue wheelchairs outside, waiting for the ambulette or for a family member.  Some are old and some are young.  Some have IV tubes and have turned the color of their medications.  They want to go home, they have finished the daily treatment torment.  They are waiting for the pain to return, or for the pain to subside.  Some look at me with sorrow in their eyes, but most are not looking anywhere.  They wait.  I bless the warm weather.

When I was a teenager I came home and waited for the next day.  We'd watch this show called 'Never Too Young' and the time between episodes was interminable.  The nights were long, the walks to school were eventful and tinged with the anticipation of seeing whichever boy was carrying my books between classes.  The space between things was so full and rich… you dreamed, you invented, you sang to yourself, you wished and longed for things.

My first husband used to go on the road, and these intervals were unbearable.  To be physically apart was unthinkable and we would write and sometimes speak over great distances at great expense… and it was passionate and terrible.  These times have receded like old waves… the longing subsided and other longings came to take its place.

It's politically incorrect to say this, but I feel sorry for women who don't experience motherhood.  This waiting is epic and long.  It is both anxious and peaceful-- it ties every single woman in the world together.. from princesses to African artisan-women to O-lan in The Good Earth who was my first literary version of a birth-giver.  We are blessed with hundreds of days in which to anticipate and wonder, learn to love our new life, to talk to it, to worry about the suffering ahead, whether their hair will be curly or straight, whether they will be happy. And just when you are so tired of carrying this weight… you suddenly do not want it to happen… you want to stay this way forever-- connected, attached-- with the two heartbeats-- you want to prolong the waiting… but it happens, and the days of infancy are so long and difficult and sleepless, and you feel this endless passage of time with an archetypal slowness…

But here we are--- waiting to go onstage now, with children grown, with so much life behind us- and even this time feels foreshortened.  We sit in a doctor's office, waiting for a bit of pain, knowing it will pass, and that we will pass, and our sorrows will pass, even though they are unbearable.  We will no longer be waiting at some point which keeps approaching with almost terrifying acceleration.

My niece is in a waiting pattern.  She is waiting for love, she is texting and tweeting and sending out instagram photos and dreaming of these boys and men who don't really exist but are like digital pin-ups.  This kind of waiting is not good, I tell her.  You must go out and begin your life.  You must find your actual physical space and take your place because these celebrity fantasies and fairy tales do not just happen.  Life is what happens when you stop texting and you listen to your heart.  You must embrace the wait-- the physical passage of time-- the loneliness and the longing and the not-knowing.  Like an explorer, you must suffer the voyage before you are rewarded with the discovery-- you must log long days and weeks wondering if there will even be a place for you at the end of the distance.  You must learn to believe.

I still use public transportation exclusively.  I like the required 'wait' for a bus or train.  I read and think, and use my writer's voice to invent lines and make up songs.  I am conscious these days that my time  is short and the waiting may not be as sweet.   The distance is not as great between points as when I was 10, but without the waiting, our lives are like words without punctuation, without line breaks, without space and without time. The beating of our hearts is the real timekeeper and to fail to listen is to fail to leave space for love to come in--sometimes when we least expect it, even when we fail to recognize it--- there it is, as though it has been waiting forever.