I Miss Giving Birth

I just read a beautiful essay by Ann Patchett called, “There Are No Children Here.” The essay is about her lifelong knowing that she never wanted to have children and the ever-present pressure and assumption that somehow, deep down, she actually did want to be a mother. Patchett writes after watching her friend give birth, “[T]hat was the one part of the decision not to have children that did in fact make me feel like I missed out. I am deeply moved by what a woman’s body is capable of.” 

“I miss giving birth,” a friend of mine said to me a few years ago. We were commiserating about how hard parenting our teen girls felt. It was during one of the first long quarantines and it was new, scary, and especially hard on our teenage daughters. Everything felt challenging. My parental worry was through the roof and I felt ineffective in all ways. There was nothing I could do to mitigate the lock-down we were in — the absence of friends, school, parties, sports, all of the things teenagers need. 

I remember giving birth like it was yesterday. I only did it once but it is one of my clearest memories. It lasted a long time. From the time my water broke to the time my I finally birthed my daughter was forty-three hours. At fifty-three I don’t remember a lot of my life memories, but I remember that. I remember the midwife telling me to walk up and down the four flights of hospital stairs twenty times. I remember walking to the end of Fifteenth Avenue and back doing nipple stimulation. I remember finishing that walk with chicken teriyaki in a tiny fluorescent-lit restaurant across the street from the hospital.

Mostly I remember how competent I felt. I was the only one who could make this birth happen. I alone could muster the energy, strength, and patience to bring this little life from inside my body out into the world. And I had a sense that my daughter was okay. I knew deep down that I was taking care of my baby.

The midwife supported and advocated for me throughout the process but after thirty hours the doctors started to talk about a C-section. I was committed to natural birth. I persisted and ultimately prevailed. Forty-three hours after my journey began I stood up, held onto a raised hospital bed, and squatted out my baby.

I felt like an Olympian. Everyone around me was happy. I was a superstar. I had done everything right. I had made it happen, in spite of being told several times that I should think about taking another route. As I stood with blood running down my legs, everyone in the room oohing and ahhing at the baby, I was for a moment alone, victorious and complete. I had done it. 

Once I got cleaned up the midwife walked me toward a bed so I could deliver the placenta. And then I got to hold my baby. She was perfect, wrapped up like a little burrito, her tiny face exquisite and peaceful. I held her and felt a huge deep breath envelop my whole body, and hers. After nine months we were together on the outside and our journey as mother and daughter would begin. 

My daughter is seventeen now and appropriately on the path of separating from me more and more each year. For every rule or guideline I impose she has another idea, a better one. Her world is full of people, places, and experiences that I know nothing about. It’s not like it was that moment when I first held her and I knew that I was everything she needed to be safe in the world. It hasn’t been like that for years. 

I miss giving birth. I miss those short few days of giving birth and meeting my daughter for the very first time. I miss the feeling that I know what I’m doing, that I have the strength and patience, and self-assuredness to do what my daughter needs. 

When I look at my daughter now I see a woman, someone who might herself give birth one day. This summer she’s working three jobs and planning for a service trip to Guatemala. She drives a car, manages a bank account, and is thinking about college. She’s strong, fierce, and incredibly competent. She’s way too big to wrap up like a burrito.

Some days my daughter will ask me for help or advice. As she rounds the corner towards eighteen, those moments are far and few between, but they happen from time to time. Occasionally I have just the right response, the answer she needs or the perfect reaction. In those precious moments, I get that “giving birth” feeling again and it feels so good. I miss giving birth. 

Just Keep Swimming

I have COVID. Along with half of the people I know and millions of other people in this country and around the world, I have COVID right now. For me, this means holing up in my basement and isolating myself to protect my partner from getting sick. I’ve watched way too many hours of TV and played too many games of Words with Friends. Even without looking at the news, I feel depressed, angry, and irritated. 

When I woke up this morning, even before brushing my teeth I put on my sandals and walked down to the lake. I’ve been instructed to not over-exert myself, to lay low until this COVID is over. But I’m losing it. I’m not used to this level of sedentary and I needed to clear my head.

After a very short walk, I sat on a bench on the lake shore, in the sun with my writing notebook, and tried to write out my big feelings. As I sat, hoping no one would walk near my virus-infected body, I watched two swimmers chatting before taking off. They were geared up with caps and goggles and the safety balloons (one pink and one yellow) that swimmers wear so boaters can see them. I watched as the swimmers waded out into the lake and finally dove under to swim.

I watched them go and wondered how far they would swim. There were many buoys dotting the lake and I watched to see if they stopped at one of those. But they just kept swimming. They swam until I couldn’t see them anymore. I returned to my notebook to keep writing and then I closed my eyes and tilted my face to the sun, taking in the lightness that I so desperately need right now.

As often happens when one sense is closed, others become more alive. With my eyes closed, I could hear eagles in the distance, the cars behind me on the road, and people’s voices on the walking path. And then I heard something closer to me, “Chop chop chop chop….” I opened my eyes to see another swimmer, this one much closer, with an orange swimming balloon. 

“Just keep swimming,” I wrote in my notebook. Many years ago I’d seen that saying tattooed on the forearm of a friend. “It means, just keep going. It means don’t give up,” my friend told me. Today I saw this as a message to me, a reminder. This dark place would not take me down, but I would have to keep swimming if I wanted to stay afloat.

As a kid, I was a serious swimmer. I swam all year round. In the summer months, I went to swim camp and swam daily in Lake Michigan. One year I did a two-mile lake swim at Navy Pier, swimming a mile out to a huge barge and turning back to swim the mile back to shore. In the colder Chicago months, I swam 3 nights a week at the YMCA near my house. Swimming was a constant in my life. I was a capable, confident, enthusiastic swimmer.

I opted not to continue swimming competitively in college. I was tired of the role that had occupied so much of my life. I remember missing it. Sometimes I’d go to the pool after class to swim laps and look longingly at the swim team stretching on the side of the pool or laughing together in the dressing room. 

But though I gave up the competition, I still swam in lakes and oceans. One year when I was twenty-six I spent the weekend with a group of friends at Lake Chelan in Eastern Washington. Lake Chelan is the largest natural lake in Washington State and the deepest lake in the United States. It’s a big, cold, intimidating lake. 

One morning I decided to go out for a swim by myself. My friends were still asleep so I crept out to the dock and jumped in. I wasn’t planning to swim far but once I was in the water, I just started swimming. Stroke after stroke I moved my body through the cold, deep water. This feeling was so familiar. I had grown into my adulthood with these strokes. 

One of the things about swimming is the feeling of quiet that takes over when your head is below water. It’s calming and comforting. With the repetitive chop chop chop of my arms moving through the water I was in a trance-like meditation. After a long time swimming like that, straight out into the middle of the lake, I felt something vibrating under the water. I snapped out of my meditation and lifted my head.

Close to me, maybe 50 yards away, I saw a seaplane landing. I looked back to the house where my friends were sleeping and it looked tiny. I realized how far I’d gone and how vulnerable I was. “No one knows I’m out here,” I thought to myself. “If I drown in this insanely deep lake, no one will know what happened to me. They’ll never find me.”

I panicked. Suddenly all my years of swimming were not enough to keep me afloat. That seaplane could have landed on me. I could have died. I could still die by drowning. I had to swim back but I couldn’t put my face back down in the water. I was afraid of losing my way again, of finding myself lost in that trance that had led me here in the first place.

When I tried to swim freestyle in the way I had known my whole life, my lungs tightened and my heart rate soared. Even with my head above water, I couldn’t do it. So I lay on my back and looked at the sky. I paddled my hands to point me in the direction of the house on the shore and did a form of breaststroke on my back towards safety. I looked up at the clouds above me, remembering to stay calm and breathe. Every once in a while I turned over and tread water to make sure I was going in the right direction. 

It took a long time, but I made it back to the house. I toweled off and went into the house to join my friends for breakfast. I told them the story of how I’d gone so far that a seaplane landed beside me. I laughed it off. And they oohed and ahhed at how far I’d been able to swim. But inside I was screaming to myself, “you almost drowned.” Swimming has never been the same for me.

I still panic in open water. I can’t go too far out into the lake, even with other people. I wish I could. As I watched those swimmers this morning I felt a longing to be that brave again. I wanted to experience the peace and comfort that comes from putting my head under water and moving my arms in that familiar rhythm. I wanted to feel brave enough to swim aimlessly into the open water.

As I got up from my bench to walk back home I saw the pink and yellow balloon swimmers in the distance. They were coming back toward shore. I felt relieved that they were safe. They had gone so far and they were coming back again. 

What I remember most from that swim at Lake Chelan was the sense of fear and danger I’d felt in the open water. But I’d done what I needed to do. I’d just kept swimming. And I made it back to shore. Life feels heavy and dark and hard right now, like I’m trying to stay afloat in a massive, cold, deep lake. Those swimmers this morning reminded me that I can do this. I’ve done it before and I can do it again. Maybe it’s time to change that decades-old Lake Chelan story from, “I almost drowned” to “I just kept swimming.” 

Menopause Madness

My stepfather had a friend who described adolescence as, “a temporary period of insanity followed by an excellent prognosis.” Menopause is a lot like this. Big and little shifts happen and if we don’t remind ourselves that we are in a period of temporary insanity, it can feel totally overwhelming. Menopause is on my mind lately. Natural, chronological life changes combined with subtle, hormonal shifts have left me with a feeling of moodiness and irritation and a persistent lack of joy. 

My daughter is one year away from leaving home. She needs minimal parenting so my role with her feels like it’s slowly evaporating. I have a stable, normal job that keeps me from traveling the world like my boss, ten years my senior, who’s preparing for a year-long sabbatical. That makes me feel like I’m left behind to hold the boring bag. I feel a little bit lost, like someone dropped me here and I’m not quite sure what to do with myself.

I can’t help thinking about a paragraph I read a few weeks ago in Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey by Florence Williams. The book, a memoir mixed with the exploration of scientific questions and answers about aging and emotions, begins when the author is fifty years old and going through an unexpected, unwanted divorce.

At one point in the book, Williams shares a scene from a conversation she had with an anthropologist about his work with an Inuit woman. After completing his interviews, the anthropologist says to the woman,

“I see everything but the years from when you were 50–54.”

“Oh, I have no words for those years,” she replied.

“Why not?”

“In those years,” she told him, “I was a polar bear.”

Since reading that I’ve been obsessed with the concept of this Polar Bear Pause women enter during menopause. For the woman interviewed, her pause was the years between the ages 50–54. In those years, she felt like a polar bear. I wonder if she felt like a polar bear because she was having hot flashes and she felt like a polar bear out of the artic — hot and bothered all the time.

I’m 53. Lately, I am struggling to find joy. I ask myself, “Laura, what brings you joy?” And nothing comes. I like to walk around my neighborhood. I like to spend time with my family. I like to hike in the woods. I like to feel like I get a win at work. I like to bake. But I don’t feel the presence of JOY the way I have in the past. Maybe right now I’m a polar bear and I miss my home. I don’t belong here among these humans who don’t understand that I’m a polar bear. I’m hot and itchy and uncomfortable.

Yesterday I went for a walk with a friend who just turned 54. As we walked I thought to myself, “This brings me joy.”

“I’ve been experiencing these crazy bouts of deep depression,” my friend told me. “They last three days and then they are gone.” She went on to describe how intense those three days are; how despairing and hopeless she feels. I wonder if polar bears feel that hopelessness and despair as they witness the ice caps around them melt as they sleep.

Every year for the last five years I’ve co-hosted a retreat for menopausal women called, Put Some Claws in Your Pause. At the retreat, we learn about the physiological, emotional, and social aspects of menopause. We talk about our personal experiences. We support each other. We laugh. We celebrate. We are polar bears among polar bears and we romp and play and experience the joy and camaraderie of this shared life experience.

Menopause is different for every single woman. I have a friend who experienced it when she was in her early thirties. She was totally alone. No one, even the doctors, understood what was going on for her. I’ve just started to notice the physical changes in my body— loss of my period, roll around the belly, achy knees, hot flashes. Many of my friends report that (and I can relate) they are inexplicably mean and impatient with their spouses and children.

Hearing about the experiences of other women — like my friend who has come to recognize these bouts of depression are probably related to menopause — helps. It reminds me that my peers and I are polar bears right now. We miss the north pole. We feel lost and scared and protective of ourselves and each other. We may get depressed and angry. We may claw and snarl at the humans who get too close. 

But this won’t last. Menopause is a temporary period in time. A time for women to be polar bears. Right now I’m in a dark hole, trying to find the light. I long for something different, like a polar bear might long for the fully formed glaciers that they used to call home. It helps to spend time with my other polar bear friends, to share our woes and laugh together, to remind ourselves and each other that we won’t live here forever. 

Hang Up and Laugh

Last weekend my friend and I took our daughters on a short trip to look at colleges. The girls just finished their junior years, their first semi-normal year since they started high school. Summer is here and they are ready to be doing almost anything other than looking at colleges with their mothers.

But the girls rallied and I think we all enjoyed ourselves. On our second night, we all shared one hotel room — the girls in one bed, my friend and I in the other. Once the lights were out and my eyes were closed, I was distracted from sleep by flashing lights from both the girls’ screens less than six feet away from me. I was annoyed by the light but more than that I felt stressed by the fact that they were still on their phones. I wound my way down a familiar stress spiral-- what was the long-term damage that all this screen time was doing, had already done, to their tender seventeen-year-old brains?

After a few minutes of trying to block the light out, I walked over to the girls’ beds and said (with much less irritation than I felt), “Can you girls stop flashing your phones?” I wanted to be nice because, after all, this was their first vacation of summer; I didn’t want to be a buzzkill.

The girls stopped flashing their cameras but continued scrolling through their phones and the light was still distracting. About thirty minutes later my friend asked them to put away their phones. A short while later, on the third attempt from me, they finally shut their phones down. The room got dark and I was able to relax at last.

Just as I was starting to fall asleep, the giggling and whispers started. But the familiar squeaking sounds of their chatting and laughter didn’t bother me as the phone light had. This distraction was different. It was comforting. The girls have known each other since they were toddlers. They have laughed and giggled at sleepovers for over a decade. And here they were again, adult-sized bodies snuggled up in the pullout couch of a hotel room with their mothers close enough to touch.

I was so grateful for the energy that they were sharing. When they put their phones away they were themselves again. They could still be engaged and playful and focused on something else. I breathed a sigh of relief and let myself settle in for the night. I didn’t have to worry about what kind of pollutants would be infiltrating their brains as long as the room was dark. 

Their phones were away for the night and they were back with us. I don’t know how long they stayed up whispering and giggling because I fell asleep.