The Motherload
I am now officially old enough to start pieces like this with phrases like, “back in the early noughties”. Not because I am about to hit a certain age but, because within the last week, after seeing my child in pain, I feel as though I’ve aged five years. Mentally more so than physically. Though I am pretty sure a few more grey hairs have sprouted here and there, and my screaming hip is about to start creaking like a squeaky old door. It’s been three days since the immediate crisis has been over, a day since we got the all clear and, while I am of course beyond grateful that it was nothing too serious, that she is back to being in good health and back in our family bed, I still feel…completely and utterly shaken.
That sigh of relief seems stuck somewhere between my gut and my throat and, stupidly enough, I am waiting to schedule some time to lock myself up in the bathroom for a good cry, rather than letting it out whenever I feel those tiny earthquakes in my chest quiver, that well of liquid emotions pushing against my tightly shut tear ducts waiting to burst. As I took a quick break from writing just now to inhale some food fast enough to give me enough time to finish this piece, I allowed my eyes to well as I told the husband that I still feel unable to truly breathe. He wrapped me in his arms and after a moment of joint silent assimilation, he suggested I go and do some “let go yoga”. I told him, the yoga part sure; the letting go part? The past few days, slowly, yeah. The worry, not until the day I die.
I was alone with my little spider-monkey baby cuddled up against me, nursing, when the doctor told me that they were admitting her into hospital due to an infection. I can’t describe what went through my mind in that moment, I can only tell you that I felt a full-body reaction to what I had just been told. Images of Ursula sucking the voice out of Ariel in The Little Mermaid kept flashing in my mind; how I wished I could suck out all of my daughter’s pain and discomfort and make it my own. After a moment of confusion as to what to do next – call the husband, arrange for a dog sitter, etc. – I got up to make my way back to the waiting area, until they had a room ready for us.
My daughter had fallen asleep, and there was no way I could pick up the baby carrier and my backpack without waking her up. The doctor – a pragmatic but compassionate, middle-aged Argentinean woman – offered to help me. Upon picking up my pack, she exclaimed madre mía, pretending to be dragged down by the weight of it. Pero qué llevas aquí dentro, she wanted to know. Cosas de madre, I told her. It didn’t hit me until two days later, during the dawning hours of our first, relatively peaceful night that, I will carry that pack with me forever, and it will always be filled to the brim, with the good and the bad. Sometimes it’ll be light with just a change of clothes and joyful transitions, at other times it will throw me off balance, heavily packed with hopeful remedies and persistent worries.
And that’s when the mental image of Ursula shifted into one from am a music video from – here it comes – way back in the early noughties. It was one of those songs that snuck its way into the Top 40 not because it was by any means profound, but catchy in a sneaky kind of way. Not in the Manah Manah (do-doo be do do) sense, but the humming kind – you never remember the lyrics (cause they’re shite), but you can’t stop humming the tune. Add to that a music video featuring a woman carrying a giant heart through the streets – of I’m assuming New York – and you’ve got yourself an earworm you can’t unsee.
I couldn’t shake the image of that woman carrying around that giant heart of hers, trying to find spaces that accept the enormity of it in its entirety, maybe even allow her to rest it without doing the physically impossible: part from it. Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? The motherload. It’s not so much all that we do for our children on the day to day, it’s all that we feel for them. From feeling as though we have just been shot in the chest with the highest possible fix of a dopamine injection upon seeing them smile, to feeling our souls scream out in agony upon seeing them in distress – there is no shrinking the beautiful monstrosity that is a Mama’s heart. It’s how we carry all those cosas de madre.