Maternity Ward

My mother did not call the entire last month of my pregnancy.  This was not unusual.  Ever since she became a minister her life was supposedly no longer her own and therefore we as her children had to get in line behind the endless tasks associated with guiding her flock.  And as if this were not enough, she had recently expanded her work to include an outreach ministry to the homeless.  Against the urging of her plaintive congregation, she had taken on the oversight of renovating Sunday school rooms to house the homeless in her small community on the Florida panhandle.  It was a visionary idea but quickly became the undoing of her life as a traditional member of the clergy. When she began her appointment at this particular church it housed your basic congregates of faith found in most protestant churches in the south.  There was a church secretary, vacation Bible school, a choir.  But the skyline from her pulpit changed significantly shortly after her endeavor to make her work as she put it more “transformational”.  Every 7-hour drive I made down Hwy 231 for a visit culminated in a knock on the door from law enforcement. A member of the church overdosed, a troubled youth kicked in a door, a pimp was hassling one of the shelter residents, and it went on and on. “Why can’t you just write sermons and preach to normal people?” I would wail. After all, we are Methodists; it’s not exactly a high maintenance denomination. My family blamed her new husband who seemed to have jump-started the whole thing by holding AA meetings in the church.  In the days leading to my first child being born I felt pretty sure she would not be involved.  Then I got a call late Saturday night as I was sitting in the bathtub in the early phase of contractions. She would be driving up after her church service the following day and planned to be there for the birth. Twenty-four hours later she held my son with tears in her eyes as I laid in my post partum bed laden with sleeplessness, epidural and post op drugs from the c-section.  The next day in the hospital my mother was a no show until 6 PM.  We had just got the baby to sleep when she stuck her head in the door.  She and her husband were on her way to dinner and quickly informed me that they would be returning home the following morning.  She had a paper to write for a graduate class she was taking in some minister education program she was in; church duties were calling her back, blah blah blah.  I didn’t have the energy to listen or respond.  “My HMO is more reliable than her” I cried to my husband after she left. The c-section had me stuck in bed for days trying to recover as I bonded with this new baby. My husband was still in school and only had a few days home with me before I was faced with new motherhood on my own.  My resentment toward my mother and her choices started to solidify in a way that could not be reversed.

Then, fourteen weeks later I returned to work and she came up for a week and half to stay with us and help me in the transition. I half expected the same manic, unfocused craziness I saw each time I went to visit. I was sure half way through there would be a crisis that would send her home early and my husband and I unexpectedly juggling childcare. The visit was anything but what I expected. She got in late Sunday night and met me in the baby’s room at the crack of dawn to help change him. Our laughter woke our husband as my new baby’s pee stream interrupted my rundown of where everything was. She cooked, cleaned, organized, and interacted with the baby non-stop. My husband was actually able to keep up with his school work for the first time since the baby’s birth. I greeted most mornings with tears over leaving the baby. Transitioning back to work was not greeted with much support from my workplace. One morning while my husband was letting me cry on my shoulder my mom came in. I wiped my eyes, and stiffened waiting to hear a superfluous metaphor that would end with “God Bless You” but instead she opened up. “When you were a baby you were on my hip all the time and I didn’t have a career. I know it’s hard but you are providing so much for your child by being independent and able to do both. I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but you are giving yourself so many more options.” I took in her words as if I were in the third grade soaking up her wisdom from my twin bed. Back then I knew no other source for where to get my advice and strength.

She was right. I remember how trapped she was all through my childhood. How much more she always wanted to do. I have worked in prisons, hiked the Appalachian trail with troubled youth, moved cattle in the rain for 14 hours straight, but this moment- motherhood is my pinnacle, where I see myself in my finest hour. I realized that for her, being a mom was not her greatest moment, it was now as she changes lives on a grander scale. We are two women, moving toward our dreams from two different polarities and in this moment we were meeting in the middle of a shared experience. Mom stayed the whole week and a half, she and her husband went and got us a load of garden mulch, took us to the Varsity, and my sock drawer makes more sense than it has in years. I’m planning a trip down in a few weeks and am sorting through my book collection to take a box for donation to the shelter. Mom says the women there need so much, it’s hard to know where to start.