When Jonah was a baby, I wrote him some poetry. My best friend Gina shot and killed herself when boo was just 7 months old, and in my grief I went on a writing frenzy. They say the writing saves the writer and I know they’re right.
I need to write my Capital District Parent Pages article for September; it is due soon. What to say? I will submit it before he is gone, and it will be published and distributed after he is there. I may go back in time, like I did for my July article, where I spoke mostly about his natural swimming ability.
I have been re-visiting his past – my pregnancy, his babyhood, everything that led to now.
There is a poem I called Womb Magic – and parts of it again ring true; eerily similar to now. After wanting a waterbirth, I had to have a c-section; it was the opposite of what I’d wanted, just like this.
I need more magic, more faith. More freeing of my mind from worry. God help me but as the days draw to their inevitable beginnings and ends I feel rising panic in my throat, my gut, my heart. Please, God, help me. Help Andy, help Boo. Please help me. Please and thank you.
I am so grateful for everyone who reads, who reaches out, who understands, or tries to, who reassures and cyber-hugs me. I am grateful I have this place where I can come and bitch or ponder, express the pain or the wonder or the anxiety. Shaking, I continue because there is no choice but to continue.
In the mornings I listen to beautiful music that carries me away – Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff. I let it enter me and soothe like balm. On the way to and from work I play Guster, LOUD, singing songs I know so well they are a part of me now.
Anyway, I thought I’d share the poem, for ‘cooking a baby’ isn’t easy – and may well be compared to magic – just like letting go of one (who seems like my baby, even though he’s 9) isn’t at all easy.
Womb Magic
Two rehearsals went awry.
First I stumbled, dropped the wand
I heard the heckling audience’s hiss
and then onstage I felt
I froze
I felt
unsympathetic ruby spotlights
stealing all the magic words
I ever knew.
Of course there is a trick to it.
I was under the illusion
I was under
it
would be effortless, the show’d go on
without me after all it was
a commonplace performance for the man
behind the curtain, for all the men
behind every curtain
and I said
if I was not the world’s best
well I could always adopt another occupation
I could take on an apprentice I could
quietly retire
but then
in time
at last
suspending
disbelief
I conjured you from soul and cell and bone
with nothing up my sleeve
in one swift sleight of
hand
and pulled,
to rave reviews,
a living breathing rabbit
from an enchanted empty hat.
The Never Normal 