Tracking the Animal
In seven explorations
Excerpts from a larger work titled (for now), TRACKING THE ANIMAL.
I.
I catch a glimpse of our shadow and am stunned by our size. Rio has more than doubled his birth weight, but still I carry him. Not inside anymore—not in that dark, watery, mysterious place nestled amongst organ, muscle, and bone. He has a form now, and little quirks that I’ve learned like new characters of the alphabet. Isn’t it strange to suddenly speak a language you never knew you had?
The language between us is visceral rather than intellectual. It’s animal.
I listen to his purring sounds of sleep. He’s ear down on my chest, fists unclenched. The most peaceful baby I’ve ever known, as long as he gets this. This closeness. The beat of my heart. The scents of milk and sweat.
When a reflex hits, his arms clasp tightly around me, and I hold on. When he wakes up hungry, he’ll suck from my body, and when he’s full, I’ll make more. I am mother. I am nature. I am her in moving form. Across the green fields, past a thicket of silver birch, our shadow clings to the land. At first I thought we looked huge, but now I see how small we are. How we belong.
II.
Every other week, a woman comes to clean our house. Her name is Precious, which wonderfully describes her.
Precious grew up in Nigeria and tells me she can still remember the feeling of being tied onto her mother’s back.
“I remember how my mother’s body moved as she swept the house and stirred the pots,” she described by swaying her hips. “And how her voice rumbled through her spine, ohhhh. I would l lay my head there and fall asleep for hours. I’m 47 now and still find myself longing to be right there again, on my mother’s back, hearing her sing. I know it’s silly.”
“No, it’s very beautiful,” I said. “What a memory you have, to recall so many details from early childhood!”
“Oh, oh,” she smiled, “you don’t forget things like that, you know? It gets coded into you, written on your bones.”
III.
At night, Rio will sleep next to me. He’ll allow his body to be held by the mattress yet insists on curling his legs into the curve of my body, his feet pressed into my soft belly so they rise and fall with my breath.
Axel, nearly 7 now, falls asleep in the bed with us. Once he’s out, Alfredo will come in and carry him to his bed - a mattress between his brother and father.
Last night Axel whispered in the dark, “Mama, I don’t know why I’m like this.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like, why do I need to be close to an adult at night?”
Earlier, we had been discussing the possibility of him sleeping over at a friend’s house. He really wants to do it, but it’s the falling asleep part he’s afraid of. He knows that most kids his age fall asleep in their own rooms, far from their parents, and stay separated the entire night.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I assured him. “It’s normal.”
He wasn’t convinced. I could tell he has started to dislike himself for this. Someone has made him feel ashamed. I wanted to ask who, but I know it didn’t really matter. Instead I asked why he likes sleeping next to us.
“I just don’t know,” he said with frustration.
“Hmm, is it warm and cozy here?”
His body softened immediately. “Yeahhh,” he said. “You’re so warm, and you have the coziest bed in the whole house.”
In truth, I do not. We have the exact same mattresses, and his bedding is far superior to mine. But I know he’s not talking about that kind of warmth. It’s the mammal warmth he needs. Breath and body. The sense of being sheltered amongst kin, which children have had for most of our evolutionary history.
“Do you remember which animal we used to be?” I asked.
“Monkeys!” he said too loudly.
“Shh,” I whispered. “Remind me in the morning to show you some pictures of how kid monkeys sleep, ok?”
He nodded and said, “But mama don’t forget, I am still a monkey.”
By this time, Rio was out. Ten minutes later, Axel was out too. I lay between my oldest and youngest, missing Bastian so much. I wanted all three of them there.
I wasn’t always this kind of mother.
Like most, I bought the crib with all the trimmings. And a stroller with all the accessories. I set up a nursery with tiny clothes hung on tiny hangers and drawers filled with pacifiers and bottles. Tiny baby Axel wanted nothing to do with any of that. He clung to my body, night and day, wailing distressfully anytime there was separation. The stroller remained unused. The crib empty. The pacifiers and bottles untouched (he rejected both, yet would happily suck on skin and bone, especially my pinky finger, anytime it was offered). Eventually the nursery became a guest room. And I became a sort of mother I didn’t anticipate, didn’t even think possible. Axel was my teacher. He’s the one who made me. And there are no words to describe how thankful I am to him now.
IV.
We never referred to Axel as a monkey when he was a baby, but we did allude to the idea at times. He was always on me, clinging to me, like many animals do, but I suppose the image of a monkey came naturally to us in the beginning. We were new parents after all.
By the time Axel started walking, he was already climbing everything in the house. Bookshelves, kitchen counters, window ledges. What are you, a monkey? I’d ask him. And he’d whoop back in those storybook sounds, ooh ohh ah ha. He embraced all things monkey business and, to this day, lives into this animal spirit.
Just recently, I had all three boys outside. Axel disappeared for a few minutes and we began to search for him. Suddenly I heard his giggle and looked up. He was way up in a tree, hanging upside down by his legs from a high branch.
“Axel!” I gasped. It felt like my heart had dropped out of my body and was pounding the ground in front of me.
With utter coolness, Axel said, “Don’t worry, mama. I’m a monkey” then swung himself upright and, branch by branch, descended back to land.
V.
Bastian was born covered in dark fur. Not just a head full of thick hair. Even his shoulders and back were carpeted in long, soft fur. Like a baby bear.
I decided his middle name would be Nanook, an Inuit word for polar bear. We aren’t Inuit (in fact, Cherokee and Choctaw blood runs thick through our veins), but we have settled in Scandinavia so close to the Arctic circle.
Temperamentally, Bastian is such a little bear. He’s known to kick back and chill in the sun whenever he finds a nice patch of grass. He’s also known for throwing tantrums the size of mountains. He’s equal parts cuddly and grizzly. The type who can go from 0 to 100 in a millisecond. From ember to blazing fire. The one who warms us to our bones.
Bastian was two when he started biting. He didn’t seem to understand that he was biting until after it had happened and his victim was writhing in pain, or worse, had thrown Bastian’s toddler-sized body to the ground in revolt. We spent months trying to teach him not to bite, yet it wasn’t until I encouraged him to give kisses instead of biting that it worked.
So now if Bastian ever pins you down, you’ll likely be showered with slobbery kisses. Across your eyes, down your throat, all the way to your toes. Mwah, mwah, he says each time. There could be dozens of them, hundreds even. As many as it takes to satisfy him.
Of course I bought him a teddy bear. It’s one of those with patches and stitch marks all over its body. On the foot it reads, Nobody is perfect. I think it was more of a reminder to us than to him.
VI.
When I was pregnant with Rio, I would often dream of him while standing in the shower. Water pouring over my head, I’d close my eyes and let my fingertips move across the steamy shower doors. That’s when they started - those long squiggly lines.
My fingers always made the same curvy vertical shape, like a string of S’s. I could never get to the second character, just that S snaking down to the ground.
So this person’s name must being with an S, I thought.
And I’d write out names on the shower door. Silas, Sal, Simon, Soren.
No, no, no no. None of them felt right.
Maybe it’s a girl? I had a strong feeling that I was carrying another boy, but we hadn’t found out for sure. Sadie, Sigrid, Signe…
No, no, no.
I’d take the shower sprayer and erase them all, then go back to those long curving shapes, watching S’s slowly drip down into the wet floor.
Once he was born, I would forget about about squiggly lines in the shower. We would name him Rio, mostly because of his birth.
His birth was a long, slow process. Labor started and stopped for several weeks, leaving me physically and mentally exhausted. I searched every corner of my soul to make sure I was in a state of surrender, no blockages. I also had the midwife check every detail of my body to make sure it was ready to go. Still, contractions would start and build for hours, and then gradually fade away into stillness.
Finally, 17 days after his due date, I had my water broken manually. The rushes that followed were unlike anything I’d ever experienced. (In previous two labors, my water didn’t break until I was pushing my babies out.) I could not believe how much water kept gushing out. Contractions also picked up quickly. In fact, the bigger the release of water, the bigger the contraction. There was such a connection there - a rhythmic push and pull between between water and pain - that I could tune into during the labor. It was as if Rio and I were communicating already.
An hour later, he entered the world fast and furiously – like a rushing river. It literally broke my body open. The birth must’ve been too fast for him too, because our tiny boy raged on relentlessly after the birth. So much was being released, I knew. And so I kept him skin to skin, nursed constantly, and let him sleep in the curves of my body all day long and through the nights.
His temperament calmed within days. I began to see how peaceful he is. And how he naturally flows – which is slowly, gently, meandering at his own pace.
I knew then his name was Rio. Which means “river” in Spanish.
Rio was around four months old when I stood in the shower and found my fingers making those long squiggly curves once again. I looked at the long string of S’s and wondered how I could have been so wrong. What else could it have meant, this shape that my fingers always made in those quiet, soft moments while dreaming of him?
Then I saw it.
Right there, drawn on the wall - written in water. It wasn’t a line of S’s. It was a river! Slowly winding down into the larger body of water below.
My fingers had known long before my mind. My body had spoken in the ancient language of shapes and forms. It had spoken English and Swedish and Spanish at once — all the languages of our family.
Any name has to work in those three languages at least, but the simple shape that came to me over and over again can be translated into any tongue.
I was so relieved that I had not forced an S name. So thankful that there had been other signs to lead me.
VII.
Though his name means “river,” Rio also has animal impulses that make my heart explode. I think he might be some sort of cat. There’s a feline sort of way about him. For example, the way he pounces on things that pique his interest. It could be anything. The tiniest bit of thread unraveling out of my shirt button. A dried leaf blown into the hallway.
Last night it was my bottle of magnesium capsules. I shook the bottle to entice him away from the edge of the bed. He watched the bottle and hunkered down. There was a smirk on his face and a wild patience in his eyes. After a bit, he pounced. Once in his grip, he laid on his haunches, butt high in the air, gnawing and growling at the plastic bottle.
“What a smart little animal,” I said. He looked up and smiled, delight dripping from his lips.
It made my heart wild. I couldn’t resist him. I picked him up, rolled him on top of me. He giggled and clawed up my chest, purred in my ear. We tumbled around, both growling in low tones.
Any stress I had was suddenly gone, all thoughts gone, all concerns about time gone. In fact, time seemed to stop completely and hold us in a pocket of the universe where not a second was lost.
Eventually he clawed at my breast, and I lifted my shirt. Curling up on my left arm, he nuzzled into my breast and closed his eyes. I laid there stroking his peace fuzz head. Breathing in his baby scent. I didn’t care how much milk he drank. Didn’t care what time it was either. He was hungry for nourishment - whether it was calories or closeness.
Sometimes while he’s nursing, he’ll lift his tiny finger to my mouth, place it on my tongue, as if trying to offer me something in return.
Reciprocity.
We nourish souls by nourishing bodies. We nourish bodies by nourishing souls.
xx
Beth
These are excerpts from a larger work titled (for now), TRACKING THE ANIMAL. Please join my list if you’re interested in more! This post contains paragraphs on the theme of motherhood, but the forthcoming work is about many different aspects of life.