Crushlove
I can't remember the text exactly but it goes something like this--"when we put that thorn in our breast, we know, we understand. And still we do it. Still we do it."
The above line is how I recall the end of the book "The Thorn Birds." Okay so right now, you're wondering what some Movie of the Week miniseries starring a gay guy as an overheated priest who has an affair with a really gorgeous, young hot Rachel Ward has to do with my being a new mama. If you actually read the book, you'd know the book has more to do with the painful choices humans make and the concept of loving some one too much. The book opens with a fable about a bird with a thorn in it's breast that sings loudly without realizing the act of singing causes the wound to hurt more. In the book and the mini-series, the Rachel Ward character, named Meg, has an affair with the Priest that creates a child, a young boy she easily loves more than her daughter by her husband. Meg's mother reveals she had a son, Meg's oldest brother, by a married man she really loved so she could keep some part of that man. But in the end, with that brother in jail for life, the mother feels God took back the son she had to steal. And she warns Meg she will suffer the same fate after stealing a son from a priest, a man who can never truly be "hers."
And in true fictionaly fashion, Meg's son drowns in an unexpected sea swell in Greece. I read "The Thorn Birds" about 17 times when I was a teenager. Of course, I didn't read it until after I'd fallen in love with the whole Priest has sex with woman miniseries but you see it made it's mark on me. And I've been thinking about it a lot lately as I get up in the middle of the night, even now with Eliza at 4 1/2 months and gently pat my hand on her stomach to make sure she's breathing. Or I'll lean down when she falls asleep in her stroller and make sure I can hear her little snorts. Yes, part of me is so terried I love this baby so much that some angry, jealous, netherworld being will take her away from me.
The four days we spent in the hospital after Eliza's birth, I was a hormonal, jealous, nervous wreck. C seemed to love the baby so much right away, and granted to a normal person this would be cause for celebration, but the shared hospital room was tiny and we were both sleep deprived and fighting so much I became convinced he would take her away from me. We'd decided Eliza would have C's last name even though we weren't married but I panicked as I was submitting the form because now I was giving him "paternal rights." I remember calling my mother one night from the hospital and saying "He's going to take her away from me!" My mother laughed, found me ridiculous and in the end I suppose I was. But I'd never loved anything like this, never felt comfortable with the concept of "getting what I want." Now that I had what I wanted, would I really be able to keep it?
The day I was released from the hospital, when the resident came to check on me at seven in the morning, Eliza was half asleep still attached to my breast. The resident offered to come back but I said no, the baby was done feeding and removed Eliza from me. Perhaps I sounded angry, perhaps the resident was surprised I would remove her but we'd been up now, Eliza and myself, all night with her attached to me for most of it. I was exhausted, I knew Eliza was done feeding and I needed the doctor to look at my incision so I could get the hell out of there. I guess the crying jag I had two days ago when the anesthesia wore off made this resident think I was a post partum case. So she reported me to my doctor and he came, a social worker was summoned and a visiting nurse was assigned to me. I left the hospital feeling the stigma of being labeled a "head case."
I had to hold it together in front of C who was quick to also consider me post partum because I'm an emotional person and he's not. Now I'm not beyond seeking help if I was depressed but I didn't think I was. I was terrified, not so much of being a mother, but of the fact that I'd been cut open and would now have to care for a new baby while I healed. I'd never had surgery before and I knew C would be at work. I was afraid I'd split myself open, have to go back to the hospital and then C and his family would take this daughter I'd waited my entire life to have, away.
On the long car ride from the Upper East Side to Chelsea, on the lower West Side, seated in the back seat next to Eliza's little car seat, I felt my cut with every bump. We passed Lincoln Center and C said "that's where you'll go to the ballet with your Mom." I was surprised, I hadn't thought about me and Eliza going to the ballet together because surely some one would have taken her away from me by then. The hospital staff thought I was an unfit mother. I could fool myself into believing I would be fine but I was worried the hospital was right. And not about the post-partum which is a clinical problem and can be treated, but that I would be an impatient, tempermental mess. C would see me as a screaming, terrifying horrible mother and take Eliza away from me. He'd raise her, perhaps with his ex-wife or his mother and I'd never get to know or see the one thing I had always really wanted.
After 24 hours at home, I realized I wasn't post-partum, just exhausted from a very stressful hospital stay. An aid would wheel a noisy cart into my room every few hours, even in the middle of the night, to check my temperature and blood pressure. The residents came at seven in the morning, usually just as Eliza had fallen asleep. Breakfast was delivered by humorless aids on clangy, bumping carts . Pediatrician at 8:30, my OB at 9:30, cleaning staff at 10, lunch at 11:30--okay you get it. Hospitals are not the place to be when you're sick. I would never describe C as having a wonderful bedside manner but those first few days at home, he was great. He'd get up with Eliza at night and take her into the living room so I could sleep. He'd give me my Ipod so I could sleep without hearing her cry. He knew that babies cried for no reason, a little fact everyone neglected to tell me. After only a day or two at home, I realized I would get better. It took me longer to realize I could do the motherhood thing but that's another story in and of itself, best saved for another day.
I fell in love with my daughter in the womb. Every time I heard her heartbeat, I'd feel a tremendous surge of pride. When I first held her, I loved her, felt like I'd met this friend I always knew I had who'd finally found her way back to me. But those first few weeks of sleep deprivation and unease, I don't know exactly when I came to love her with such a numbing, crushing force sometimes I think I'm going to implode. One of my friends described it as "you hold them and an arrow shoots through you." It came on more gradually than that for me but now, sometimes when I look at her and she smiles back at me, I feel like a house on fire. I feel the blood in my veins like it's going to boil over. I feel so overwhelmed by this love it will rise in me like a swollen river and I will completely disappear.
Around the time I started feeling this, what I'll call "Crushlove," a song started playing frequently on the Satellite radio station we like. It's by a band called "Death Cab for Cutie" and the song is called "I Will Follow You Into the Dark." I liked the song, liked the words and started to sing it to Eliza as "our song" so to speak. It's a very morbid song, one too morbid to sing to a new baby but I did it anyway. The song opens up with the line, "love of mine, someday you will die. But I'll be close behind, to follow you, into the dark." See, this is some serious bad shit here, but a sentiment probably every mother can understand. This love is so boiling, burning and almost painful, I feel like I can no longer live without this child. When she's spinning around in her little exosaucer and then she looks up to see me watching and smiles, I feel like an arrow is shooting through me. I might be standing there like an ordinary person, with an ordinary smile on my face, but inside I feel this bond, this love like a laser beam, connecting her to me.
This past weekend C's kids were here. Their mother came to pick them up while I rinsed plates and put them in the dishwasher. I could hear her in the living room as she told her kids to get their stuff together because she was starving. I could then hear her saying, in that baby talk voice we all seem to get when we look at a baby, "Hi Eliza." There was some general conversation from the kids. "We took her to a party today." "I got a snow cone." I could hear their mother say "Eliza, you've got your mother's beautiful, big eyes." It's a nice compliment but I really think Eliza's eyes are her own. I shut the dishwasher and walked into the living room. C's ex-wife stood holding Eliza, who wasn't crying, while their son looked up at his mother adoringly. It suddenly hit me how much happier C's kids and probably C would be if I was out of the picture. C's kids wouldn't have to share their sister with me, a woman they don't care for as much as their mother. And C, I'd love to say I'm sure he wouldn't be happy without me but his ex-wife is pretty impressive. Had she not kicked him out, he'd still be there. It took everything out of me not to rush up to this woman and pull my kid away. She helped her son hold her the correct way. He took Eliza and she didn't cry. Feeling confident, he headed towards the door. Still Eliza didn't cry. I watched C's son take her all the way to the door, now opened by his mother who was saying, "I think her mother will mind if you take her."
I felt powerless as I watched them stand in the doorway. It was one of those unfunny jokes, I realize C's son and his mother weren't going to take my daughter away but it was painful. It's not easy for any of us to be a blended family. I'd say perhaps some of my fears on losing Eliza have to do with C and myself not being married, with having to share him with his prior family.
But in truth, I know my fear is based more in this burning crushlove. In the movie "Sixteen Candles" (yes, we go from Thorn Birds to Sixteen Candles), the father tells Molly Ringwald, about liking a boy "That's why we call them crushes. If they didn't hurt, we'd call them something else." I always thought that was a great line. Although my daughter brings me more happiness than Robert Franco did in the 8th grade, there's still a fair amount of pain involved in loving some one so much. It's good pain, really, but the intensity of it frightens me. The idea of knowing I don't want to be without this person and yet still knowing she will grow up, she will be her own person, she will leave me. Imagine committing yourself so totally to a man, all the while knowing your relationship would expire in 18 years. And for a child, it's much sooner as they start easing into life with their peers pretty early on. Motherhood is all about being selfless. I didn't come to the party without knowing that. It's just that the love I feel for her is so deep and so fulfilling, I know I will miss her not being my little baby. Already I feel the pain of her no longer falling asleep in my arms, of her smiles to everyone and not just to me. Though I take joy in her smarts, her newfound independence, her normal development, oh how I love that little baby who would never let me put her down.
Like my friend said, I held her almost to the point of resenting her, and in that time an arrow shot through me and now there's no life for me without her.
The above line is how I recall the end of the book "The Thorn Birds." Okay so right now, you're wondering what some Movie of the Week miniseries starring a gay guy as an overheated priest who has an affair with a really gorgeous, young hot Rachel Ward has to do with my being a new mama. If you actually read the book, you'd know the book has more to do with the painful choices humans make and the concept of loving some one too much. The book opens with a fable about a bird with a thorn in it's breast that sings loudly without realizing the act of singing causes the wound to hurt more. In the book and the mini-series, the Rachel Ward character, named Meg, has an affair with the Priest that creates a child, a young boy she easily loves more than her daughter by her husband. Meg's mother reveals she had a son, Meg's oldest brother, by a married man she really loved so she could keep some part of that man. But in the end, with that brother in jail for life, the mother feels God took back the son she had to steal. And she warns Meg she will suffer the same fate after stealing a son from a priest, a man who can never truly be "hers."
And in true fictionaly fashion, Meg's son drowns in an unexpected sea swell in Greece. I read "The Thorn Birds" about 17 times when I was a teenager. Of course, I didn't read it until after I'd fallen in love with the whole Priest has sex with woman miniseries but you see it made it's mark on me. And I've been thinking about it a lot lately as I get up in the middle of the night, even now with Eliza at 4 1/2 months and gently pat my hand on her stomach to make sure she's breathing. Or I'll lean down when she falls asleep in her stroller and make sure I can hear her little snorts. Yes, part of me is so terried I love this baby so much that some angry, jealous, netherworld being will take her away from me.
The four days we spent in the hospital after Eliza's birth, I was a hormonal, jealous, nervous wreck. C seemed to love the baby so much right away, and granted to a normal person this would be cause for celebration, but the shared hospital room was tiny and we were both sleep deprived and fighting so much I became convinced he would take her away from me. We'd decided Eliza would have C's last name even though we weren't married but I panicked as I was submitting the form because now I was giving him "paternal rights." I remember calling my mother one night from the hospital and saying "He's going to take her away from me!" My mother laughed, found me ridiculous and in the end I suppose I was. But I'd never loved anything like this, never felt comfortable with the concept of "getting what I want." Now that I had what I wanted, would I really be able to keep it?
The day I was released from the hospital, when the resident came to check on me at seven in the morning, Eliza was half asleep still attached to my breast. The resident offered to come back but I said no, the baby was done feeding and removed Eliza from me. Perhaps I sounded angry, perhaps the resident was surprised I would remove her but we'd been up now, Eliza and myself, all night with her attached to me for most of it. I was exhausted, I knew Eliza was done feeding and I needed the doctor to look at my incision so I could get the hell out of there. I guess the crying jag I had two days ago when the anesthesia wore off made this resident think I was a post partum case. So she reported me to my doctor and he came, a social worker was summoned and a visiting nurse was assigned to me. I left the hospital feeling the stigma of being labeled a "head case."
I had to hold it together in front of C who was quick to also consider me post partum because I'm an emotional person and he's not. Now I'm not beyond seeking help if I was depressed but I didn't think I was. I was terrified, not so much of being a mother, but of the fact that I'd been cut open and would now have to care for a new baby while I healed. I'd never had surgery before and I knew C would be at work. I was afraid I'd split myself open, have to go back to the hospital and then C and his family would take this daughter I'd waited my entire life to have, away.
On the long car ride from the Upper East Side to Chelsea, on the lower West Side, seated in the back seat next to Eliza's little car seat, I felt my cut with every bump. We passed Lincoln Center and C said "that's where you'll go to the ballet with your Mom." I was surprised, I hadn't thought about me and Eliza going to the ballet together because surely some one would have taken her away from me by then. The hospital staff thought I was an unfit mother. I could fool myself into believing I would be fine but I was worried the hospital was right. And not about the post-partum which is a clinical problem and can be treated, but that I would be an impatient, tempermental mess. C would see me as a screaming, terrifying horrible mother and take Eliza away from me. He'd raise her, perhaps with his ex-wife or his mother and I'd never get to know or see the one thing I had always really wanted.
After 24 hours at home, I realized I wasn't post-partum, just exhausted from a very stressful hospital stay. An aid would wheel a noisy cart into my room every few hours, even in the middle of the night, to check my temperature and blood pressure. The residents came at seven in the morning, usually just as Eliza had fallen asleep. Breakfast was delivered by humorless aids on clangy, bumping carts . Pediatrician at 8:30, my OB at 9:30, cleaning staff at 10, lunch at 11:30--okay you get it. Hospitals are not the place to be when you're sick. I would never describe C as having a wonderful bedside manner but those first few days at home, he was great. He'd get up with Eliza at night and take her into the living room so I could sleep. He'd give me my Ipod so I could sleep without hearing her cry. He knew that babies cried for no reason, a little fact everyone neglected to tell me. After only a day or two at home, I realized I would get better. It took me longer to realize I could do the motherhood thing but that's another story in and of itself, best saved for another day.
I fell in love with my daughter in the womb. Every time I heard her heartbeat, I'd feel a tremendous surge of pride. When I first held her, I loved her, felt like I'd met this friend I always knew I had who'd finally found her way back to me. But those first few weeks of sleep deprivation and unease, I don't know exactly when I came to love her with such a numbing, crushing force sometimes I think I'm going to implode. One of my friends described it as "you hold them and an arrow shoots through you." It came on more gradually than that for me but now, sometimes when I look at her and she smiles back at me, I feel like a house on fire. I feel the blood in my veins like it's going to boil over. I feel so overwhelmed by this love it will rise in me like a swollen river and I will completely disappear.
Around the time I started feeling this, what I'll call "Crushlove," a song started playing frequently on the Satellite radio station we like. It's by a band called "Death Cab for Cutie" and the song is called "I Will Follow You Into the Dark." I liked the song, liked the words and started to sing it to Eliza as "our song" so to speak. It's a very morbid song, one too morbid to sing to a new baby but I did it anyway. The song opens up with the line, "love of mine, someday you will die. But I'll be close behind, to follow you, into the dark." See, this is some serious bad shit here, but a sentiment probably every mother can understand. This love is so boiling, burning and almost painful, I feel like I can no longer live without this child. When she's spinning around in her little exosaucer and then she looks up to see me watching and smiles, I feel like an arrow is shooting through me. I might be standing there like an ordinary person, with an ordinary smile on my face, but inside I feel this bond, this love like a laser beam, connecting her to me.
This past weekend C's kids were here. Their mother came to pick them up while I rinsed plates and put them in the dishwasher. I could hear her in the living room as she told her kids to get their stuff together because she was starving. I could then hear her saying, in that baby talk voice we all seem to get when we look at a baby, "Hi Eliza." There was some general conversation from the kids. "We took her to a party today." "I got a snow cone." I could hear their mother say "Eliza, you've got your mother's beautiful, big eyes." It's a nice compliment but I really think Eliza's eyes are her own. I shut the dishwasher and walked into the living room. C's ex-wife stood holding Eliza, who wasn't crying, while their son looked up at his mother adoringly. It suddenly hit me how much happier C's kids and probably C would be if I was out of the picture. C's kids wouldn't have to share their sister with me, a woman they don't care for as much as their mother. And C, I'd love to say I'm sure he wouldn't be happy without me but his ex-wife is pretty impressive. Had she not kicked him out, he'd still be there. It took everything out of me not to rush up to this woman and pull my kid away. She helped her son hold her the correct way. He took Eliza and she didn't cry. Feeling confident, he headed towards the door. Still Eliza didn't cry. I watched C's son take her all the way to the door, now opened by his mother who was saying, "I think her mother will mind if you take her."
I felt powerless as I watched them stand in the doorway. It was one of those unfunny jokes, I realize C's son and his mother weren't going to take my daughter away but it was painful. It's not easy for any of us to be a blended family. I'd say perhaps some of my fears on losing Eliza have to do with C and myself not being married, with having to share him with his prior family.
But in truth, I know my fear is based more in this burning crushlove. In the movie "Sixteen Candles" (yes, we go from Thorn Birds to Sixteen Candles), the father tells Molly Ringwald, about liking a boy "That's why we call them crushes. If they didn't hurt, we'd call them something else." I always thought that was a great line. Although my daughter brings me more happiness than Robert Franco did in the 8th grade, there's still a fair amount of pain involved in loving some one so much. It's good pain, really, but the intensity of it frightens me. The idea of knowing I don't want to be without this person and yet still knowing she will grow up, she will be her own person, she will leave me. Imagine committing yourself so totally to a man, all the while knowing your relationship would expire in 18 years. And for a child, it's much sooner as they start easing into life with their peers pretty early on. Motherhood is all about being selfless. I didn't come to the party without knowing that. It's just that the love I feel for her is so deep and so fulfilling, I know I will miss her not being my little baby. Already I feel the pain of her no longer falling asleep in my arms, of her smiles to everyone and not just to me. Though I take joy in her smarts, her newfound independence, her normal development, oh how I love that little baby who would never let me put her down.
Like my friend said, I held her almost to the point of resenting her, and in that time an arrow shot through me and now there's no life for me without her.
posted by Litgirl Mama at 6:57 AM
1 Comments:
I'm kind of weepy today already, and reading this I totally teared up. I don't have the blended family issues you do, but your description of the overwhelming love for a baby hits very close to home.
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