Lessons from my early days as a new mom

Who knows why I play in my head what I play in my head. Every once in a while, this particular memory comes to me: of walking through the forest of Ateneo to get to National Book Store. I cannot quite access the year I did this and it takes a while to get there in real time. This is the walk I used to take as a new mother. The car would get me at National and it was easier to walk from my class in Berchman’s than to be fetched inside campus. I always walked feverishly because my breasts would be filled with milk and I knew a child would be waiting for me at the end of this walk.

In memory, what comes to me is the perfection of the scene. This is the gift of hindsight. The walk seems leisurely, even pleasurable. I attribute my much thinner waist then to this daily walk — at least an easy 3,000 steps a day. I attribute my good skin in those years to this walk as well. There I was sweating for two hours in the classroom plus this walk. My pores must have been grateful.

But I know my psyche (what Sr. Bubbles calls my powerful psyche) well enough to know it is not being random in what it is tossing. It is trying to teach me a lesson. The truth is, these were hard and lean years: the years my children came and I was teaching full-time. Noth- ing was easy in those early days. None of my pregnancies were cheerful or wonderful. None of my birthing stories were walks in the park. None of those early days were pristine, clean or grand. In almost every day was a measure of difficulty. Those walks I took were full of my worries, both large and small, least of which was if I would make it in time before the Ate would defrost a bottle of my milk. There was worry of money, of the other children, of an unfinished degree, an unfinished manuscript, an unfinished friendship fraught over, an unfinished lesson, an unfinished stack of papers; life impinging on all sides — the drive for productivity in the midst of dealing with the consequences of re-productivity; an endless cycle of give, give and give.

My memory circles back to my first Christmas in my new home, the old home on 6 Dao. Teodoro is only two. I am pregnant with Marty. I decide to make my own Christmas wrapper. This is a ridiculous memory. I carve a Christmas tree on a potato. Who is this crazy woman? The same woman who made her own Christmas décor in the first year of her marriage.

I have these crazy moments when making something from scratch myself (when I am not a crafter at all) gives me a false sense of well-being. It is my most intrinsic need to literally, with my bare hands if necessary, create something meaningful. In all things, my psyche is filled with the need to make meaning any way it can. In all these memories, I am acutely aware of how difficult life is, but I am propelled by the need to make sense of things somehow. Perhaps this is the Spirit in me: making meaning a conscious choice to always choose the light.

Why then does the psyche make me remember these in particular, today? Because the stories remind me that I did survive. I made that walk and landed back home, safe and sound, milk and children, and marriage and home, and life intact. It seemed impossible at the time, truly, and those of us who suffer immeasurably (and truly who does not?) know the “impossible” most acutely: the un-climbable, un-bridgeable, in-escapable grief our hearts sift and filter. I’ve learned this now: Not that I’m strong. God forbid you should ever think you yourself alone are capable of the herculean feat of saving yourself; but that God gives more than enough to help you through all things.

I know this concretely: If you see my journals from 1995-1999, you will not see words, but rather numbers of all the money I ever owed or needed. Those charts still appear in my journals today and they are less, not because I owe less, but because I trust more. Pages upon pages of words I spent on all the unfinisheds I just listed and I finished most of them, including the most fraught-over friendships. I never finished glamorously or well (contrary to my profile pics, har har har) and many of them I finished haphazardly, but you know what, most people are kind and generous. You need only to meet them with kindness and generosity as well. Most people forget this: You only reap what you sow. And all the unfinisheds? I keep them close to me, too. I do not label them regret and toss them in a dark closet. They, too, are in the light.

I write this while crying my head off all morning. These early days in my new job are trying and difficult. I am still in great difficulty over Teodoro and there are days when I feel I will be annihilated by it all. I spend my first hour in the garden and it teaches me even she (yes, my garden is female, but don’t tell Dino…) who asks for nothing, gets everything for free from the earth and sky. Its only real task is to bloom, flower, give shade, and then die. And on these mornings, when my heart is muddled and frazzled, I think of this: I need only to bloom, flower, give shade, and then die. The earth and sky are there for me, too. What more do I need?

So this is to all of us who are suffering from a version of early days: It will pass, either because of sheer time or sheer grace. The faithful in us, and among us, know it is more because of the latter.