Your New, Huge Size

That's what the subject line of the email said.

Having spent the past few days fielding well-meaning, unsolicited comments from strangers about my now-indisputable baby bump, I have this unnerving feeling of eternal exposure. As a writer, I am accustomed to a kind of security that comes from being the disembodied person behind the words. I like my privacy. And after several excruciatingly slow first-trimester months, suddenly my life is transforming in a hugely visible, public way at the momentum of an oncoming train. Never have I felt a greater sense of belonging to--or being claimed by--the human culture. The new life taking root in me seems to inspire a kind of magnetic optimism that is beaming in from the faces around me, everywhere I go. 

So when I saw "Your New, Huge Size" in my in-box, my first thought was that yet another stranger had somehow penetrated my personal space membrane to say something about my belly or how I should eat or feel or think or look or give birth. And my second thought amusingly brought me back to the reality of spamland; this was just another email about penis enhancement. And yet--

My new, huge size...I have been reinvented, larger than life. Or at least larger than my old life that is in the process of being shed from the inside out. This husk of past fattening around the seed of future. This little boy I know more intimately than anything or anyone and yet do not know. This answer to the question I never knew how to ask swallowed whole and blossoming.

Comments

[dale]

Oh, yes. Only the beginning of a series of not-belonging-to-myself-anymore epiphanies that having kids entails.

A great blessing, but it never feels like an entirely unmixed one :->

[Sage]

Beautifully said, Dale. Thank you.

[The Writer Mama]

You go, earth mama getting-rounder-by-the-minute.

:) C

[Jennifer/The Word Cellar]

I struggle with the decision of whether or not to have a child. The last line of this post touches something deep inside of me. I honestly don't know what it means to me yet, but it resonates. "This answer to the question I never knew how to ask swallowed whole and blossoming." Thank you for such a powerful and poetic viewpoint.

[Sage]

My pleasure, Jennifer. Wishing you grace and illumination as you explore this big decision.

[rowena]

The experience of being pregnant was, for me, profoundly weird.

This feeling of being on display was weird, when I was used to being anonymously behind the camera or the typewriter or the pen, even as a teacher, you are behind the role of teacher. But all of a sudden, the whole world was paying attention to me and it was uncomfortable.

And then the idea that there was this whole little human being inside me, "blossoming.' All their potentials, their physical bodies, their everythingness, all right inside me, the me that used to be only mine.

Then there was my creativity, which had been solely mine, but seemed suddenly, well, stolen by the life I was creating inside.

Now that the babies are on the outside, life has changed, changed utterly. Still figuring out how.

[Mari]

I'm always intrigued by this topic -- the push-pull decision to have/not have children, and how to feel once we've had or not had them. It's true, it seems, and as rowena has suggested, that ambivalence is a constant companion along either fork in the road. As one who will likely not have children of my own -- by choice and by default -- I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to take that other path. There are waves of sadness and regret. And then there are days -- most days, I like to think -- when I am grateful for my life just as it is, with my husband and cats and, when I can get it, time and space for daydreaming, reading, and poem making.

It's healthy to acknowledge our ambivalence, no matter which path we have chosen. Doing so demonstrates that we are thinking, feeling humans who are fully alive in the world, consciously embracing life's complexities and difficult passages.

And Sage, you of anyone I know has done the hard work -- both inner and outer -- to prepare yourself for your own chosen path of motherhood, and this will only serve you as a parent.

Here's Rilke for the journey:

"You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born... Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens... just wait for the birth, for the hour of new clarity." —Rainer Maria Rilke

[Sage]

Rowena, "profoundly weird" sounds like the most accurate phrase I've heard yet for this experience of being reinvented from the inside out!

Mari, thank you for your wisdom and insight, as always, and for that incredible quote!

[The Writer Mama]

Happy Mother's Day!

:) C

[Karen]

This is huge, and the ripe moment to say hello.

[littlepurplecow]

Sage, I am so excited for you. I remember feeling most alive during my pregnancies. It's like carrying an oversized precious gift with the promise of joy to all receivers.