One year ago, I was getting ready for a Halloween party when I decided to take a pregnancy test. The Husband and I were actively trying to conceive, and though I didn’t really think I was pregnant yet, I wanted to be certain I wasn’t drinking for two.
Then the word appeared. The word I had been hoping for. The word I never thought I’d see again, after trying for so long and experiencing so much loss.
PREGNANT.
I sat in the bathroom for several minutes. The Husband was still asleep in the bedroom, and nobody else in the world knew I was pregnant yet. Everything was about to change, and I wanted to cherish that quiet sliver of time when it was just us — just baby and me, together.
I rubbed my tummy and tried to imagine what was to come.
Little sea monkey.
One year later, a word on a pee stick has become a baby.
Real-life, actual baby.
It still messes with my head sometimes. One year and a lot of pizza later, there’s a wacky new person in the world and I now carry the title of “mommy.” WHAT? How did that happen? Magnets, how do they work?
Life, you crazy.
People ask me, “How’s motherhood?” and I don’t know how to respond, because there’s no compact answer. It’s good. And it’s strange. And it’s hard. And it has changed my life in multiple ways, and in deeply profound ways.
Life changer.
It’s challenging to shift your entire identity and give up your autonomy, even when it’s a choice you’ve made.
My shirts are now stained with milk and spit-up. The bags under my eyes are more like steamer trunks. I have serious conversations about poop. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and think, “Ugh! Will someone please quiet that screaming child?” before I remember I’m the mom. I’m responsible for this gremlin. I often fantasize about running off to a hotel for one solid night of sleep all by myself — just one night — but I know I’ll just wake up in a puddle of milk and have a lot of explaining to do to housekeeping.
But there are other things too.
Everest is so exquisite, with long eyelashes and chunky elbows and tiny, pink toes that look like salad shrimp, I have never seen anything so amazing. Not Angkor Wat. Not the sunrise from Machu Picchu. The other day I took the baby on a walk and he was so giggly that I couldn’t look away from his beautiful, rosy face, and I literally steered the stroller into a “No Parking” sign. Sometimes I wake up in the morning, and this fuzzy-headed baby is gazing at me from his bassinet, and I realize that every moment of my life was carving the path that led to this very moment, and I am grateful.
Hi, pretty.
I don’t want to say that my life is perfect and fulfilled now that I have a child, because don’t you hate it when people say that? You know that person is sticky and tired and elbow-deep in smelly diapers 14 times a day, and you wonder what the heck their life was like before if they are only now fulfilled.
But one year later, things are definitely different. Bigger. My world is more expansive now, and I like it this way.
It definitely hasn’t been easy — sometimes Everest wakes at 4 a.m. and is ready for the day, other times he screams purple for an hour for absolutely no reason I can discern — but the fact that I find it rewarding is proof of how much I adore this child.
My friend Maggie Thach was kind enough to tag me in the Writing Process Blog Tour. You can check out her answers to these very same questions on Jim Ruland’s blog.
Here we go:
What are you working on?
Well, I gave birth just two months ago. So there’s the writing I did before Everest was born, and then there’s what I’ve been doing lately, and the Grand Canyon sits in between. I can’t even see the other side from here.
Pre-baby: A memoir. Essays. The occasional short story.
Post-baby: Sleep. Grocery lists. Little bits of this and that. Finding things that rhyme with “Go to sleep.”
I’d like to say I’m working on more, but finding an hour of quiet, hands-free time now is like spotting a unicorn in the wild. During those rare, lovely moments when Everest is napping, I have a decision to make: Do I sleep? Do some housework? Should I chip away at the marketing work that gives me a paycheck? Or write something creative that might result in payment eventually?
Housework usually wins, since I need clean dishes and laundry and such. The marketing work is a close second, because money is good. The creative work suffers the most.
Honestly, I should sleep more. I should be sleeping right now. I am so tired.
Also he should sleep more.
Why do you write what you do?
My mom. I was a writer before my mom was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease, but her disease added a deeper purpose and a sense of urgency to my writing. It also changed how I live my life. Knowing that the disease might be genetic, I made a conscious decision to experience more while I still could and capture those moments on the page — and that’s pretty much the whole story of my memoir.
Also because Alzheimer’s steals so much from a person, I wanted to give my mom the dignity of being remembered. This book is my way of maintaining her presence in the world. I didn’t want her to be like a Monet in the attic, something beautiful that is never seen again.
How does your work differ from the other works in the some area/genre?
My story is not quite a travel memoir and not quite a grief memoir. It’s something in between, and it’s different because it’s mine.
It was devastating to witness the degeneration of my mom — as each day moved forward, she was erased a little more — but it was also transformative for me. Watching her die helped me learn how to live. I didn’t want to put things off anymore. I had to see the world, love radically, and collect memories. And in the process, I wanted to honor my mom by living out her dreams.
So I spent one year backpacking to 18 countries around the world, hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, whitewater rafting down the Nile, praying at an ashram in India, tending to abused elephants in Thailand, volunteering at a monkey park in the jungles of Bolivia, fleeing the Arab Spring in Egypt. My trip was made mostly solo, and it involved quitting my longtime journalism career, losing all sense of security, and leaving my newlywed husband in California for the first year of our marriage. It also meant rediscovering home and what it means to be part of a family.
How does your writing process work?
I don’t have a process anymore. In the two months since Everest arrived, all red-faced and hollering, I’ve felt the itch to write but I haven’t had much luck actually doing it. Some of it is a time issue, since this kid is super needy and refuses to pull his own weight around here — but mostly I can’t string together coherent thoughts anymore. My brain is blurry, and my hormones are pinging around like crazy. So I’ve been keeping notes, lists and snippets of things on my iPhone, things to tackle later when the mom fog dissipates and my body returns to normal.
Also he is loud. Have I mentioned that? It’s hard to write when your ear drums are shattered.
Yep.
At first I felt guilty about not writing. Then I remembered an amazing conversation I had with Attica Locke, back when I was eleventy months pregnant and about to pop. She said to put the work on a shelf. Let it sit there for a few months, maybe more. Focus on taking care of my baby and taking care of myself. “The work will wait,” she said. “The baby won’t.”
So that’s where I reside now. I can only handle one thing at a time that is demanding to be fed. Right now it’s a human. Eventually it’ll be my book.
About Heather: Heather Scott Partington was raised in California’s central valley. She teaches high school English and lives in Elk Grove, California, with her husband and two kids. Her writing has appeared at The Rumpus, Bookslut, The Nervous Breakdown and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Heather holds an MFA in fiction from UC Riverside’s Palm Desert Campus.
About Leigh: Leigh Raper writes both fiction and non-fiction and sometimes posts on her blog about pop culture at leighraper.com. Her work has appeared at Spilt Infinitive and in the Best of Spilt Anthology and on The Coachella Review blog. She is slightly obsessed with television, rocks out to classic ’80s hair metal, and plays fetch with a wicked smart Labrador Retriever. She lives in the hamlet of Palisades, NY, on a rural postal route 12 miles north of New York City.
Crying is baby’s way of communicating. Baby’s eardrum-piercing, patience-testing way of communicating.
Experts say that parents get to know their child’s sounds, eventually distinguishing a hunger wail from a boredom cry. After a full six weeks getting to know my new baby, I can assure you this is true. I am now fluent in newborn — and this is the language my baby speaks.
The Wet Diaper
Sound: Sudden and distressed. The same sound I used to make when I’d wake up hungover and discover all the drunken texts I’d sent the night before. Reason: Needs a new diaper for the 17th time today.
The Meh
Sound: Dismal sobs. The melancholy of a Morrissey song meets the sad mime in a snooty French film. Reason: General malaise. Just felt like crying.
The Red Eye
Sound: Frustrated bleats. A sickly goat. Reason: Eye is goopy and cannot open it. Or eyes are closed and forgot to open them, making the world a dark and scary place.
The Albatross (aka The Rime of the Ancient Momminer)
Sound: Squawks that grow incrementally louder and more forceful in their refusal to be ignored. Plus the burden of knowing that you are cursed and everyone in earshot hates you. Reason: Wants to be held; needs to hang from your neck.
The Duran Duran
Sound: Raspy, panicked yips, like a rabid woodland creature. Hungry like the wolf. Reason: Nipple NOW.
The Dick Cheney
Sound: Part movie villain cackle, part power saw. Reason: No reason. Just wants to break you.
The End of the World as We Know It
Sound: Brassy and shrill. The wail of a fire engine that starts small and builds to a traffic-stopping scream. Accompanied by: A purple face. Tiny fists of fury. Inconsolable rage. Reason: It’s too cold. Now it’s too hot. The car seat strap is too snug. The sunbeam is too close. A sock fell off. Basically it’s the worst day ever.
I have a baby now, and he’s like Ohio weather. Unpredictable. Mercurial. Sometimes stormy, sometimes sunshiny, sometimes both at the same time. Also — and this is the most important part — he is different every day. Every. Damn. Day.
Just look at what a difference two weeks makes!
From baby jerky to baby fat.
He was such a little squishy bean at the hospital. But now I wake up and look down into his brown-grey eyes and never know what I’m going to see there.
Squishface at the hospital.
Actual human child at home.
So I’ve been taking a zillion photos. I’ve been searing everything into my memory — every cuddle, every cry. And I’ve been tracking baby’s daily activities on a fancy phone app, which gives me a stupid amount of data and graphs that I will never use.
Here’s how Everest is growing up so far:
Age in weeks: 2
Weight at birth: 7 pounds, 1 ounce
Current weight: 7 pounds, 12 ounces
Diapers changed: 166
Times I’ve been peed on: 11
Times I’ve been shat on: 3
Total feedings: 231
Time spent feeding: 80 hours, 48 minutes (I just have to draw attention to this part right here, because WOW. Breastfeeding is literally my full-time job right now.)
Shirts stained by spit up: 4
Days I’ve forgotten to shower: 4
Meltdowns, baby: 3
Meltdowns, me: Countless
Sleepless nights: Many
Cuddles: Endless
I can’t wait to see what the next two weeks bring.
