This is totally new territory
Also, we got this.
It’s midsummer’s eve, or summer solstice. Longest day of the year. I awoke to bright heat this morning. The sun rises just outside of my bedroom window. Right now that means a 3 am wake-up call. By 7 am, the heat has gathered in large billows behind the curtain, making it hard to breathe in our small room. I made sure Rio baby was settled, and then I snuck out to write. Once I opened the substack app, I found a draft from 4 weeks ago. I re-read it. Re-lived it all. And now I’m sharing it too. Feels like a good day to remember that time isn’t as scarce as we’re conditioned to believe.
There was a new feeling in the house this morning. I sensed it before I’d even opened my eyes. The baby was stirring beside me, and my body ached from all of yesterday’s work. I found it hard to move, but there was no time to waste. Pushing through pain, I gathered Rio’s little body in my arms and turned onto my back. He rolled to my side, latched on. All of this without fully leaving our slumbering states.
What pulled me out of sleep was thirst. I was so parched my lips stuck to my teeth. Somehow Rio continued to find liquid in me. He drew it out, warm and white, from my body. He settled into my sore limbs, tapped into my body, and once he was done, rolled off again in sound sleep. It was unusually quiet. No raucous birdsong as usual. Just our breathing. Our inhales were synced, two of his for every one of mine. Our exhales mingled in the gray twilight of the bedroom. I was still on my back, wanting to make sure he was in deep sleep before I moved. My back ached though. I counted the stabs. 1, 2, 3, 4… When I get to 15, I told myself, I can turn over on my side.
I can only lie on my right side. For months, it’s hurt too much to lie on my left. At first, the pain was so deep and so intense that I thought it was an organ. Reluctantly, I booked a doctors appointment.
“Do you feel the pain only at night?” asked the doctor.
“Yes,” I told him, “If I lay on my left side or on my back.”
“How bad is the pain?”
“Well, it wakes me up every night. Makes it really hard to go back to sleep.”
“But you don’t feel any pain while lying down during the day?”
“Um, I’m not really able to lie down during the day.”
He thought I misunderstood. “No, like when you lie down on the sofa to watch TV, or read, or talk to your partner…” He was gonna keep going but I stopped him.
“I can’t remember the last time I’ve been able to do any of that,” I said.
“So you never relax on the sofa?”
“It’s been a very long time.” I have 3 small kids, a husband, a job. I have never ending piles of laundry and dishes and recycling runs, a constant flow of meals, meltdowns, butts to wipe, boots and overalls to snap, pickup times and appointments to make, not that I’m ever on time for any of those. Not that there ever is enough time.
He nodded, but in a way that didn’t convince me he understood. I wished I wasn’t talking to him. Not him personally. Any him wouldn’t do. I wished for a her who might know something about mothering and caregiving. About keeping other bodies alive, day and night. Not just bodies, but their spirits too. Of being a body that belongs more to the community than to oneself. Of being a landscape. One that’s pulled on and pulled from until she’s so dry she can’t garner enough saliva in her mouth to keep her lips from sticking to her teeth. I wished for a her, because, unlike him, she might know what it feels like to never rest, never repair, to keep absorbing the needs of others because, as cliché as it sounds, your children actually are your greatest joy. Loving them is the easiest decision you’ve ever made. The problem is, you’re the the only one who’s there. You’re doing the work of a village. Trying to fill all the gaps.
“Can you lie down for me?” asked the doctor. He poked around, pulled at the loose skin on my stomach and felt for my muscles. He said my abdominals were okay for someone who’s just had their third child. “Could be better,” he clarified. “But not too bad.”
Then he sent me to the lab. With a needle in my arm, I watched vial after vial filling with my blood. “It’s like your own unique elixir,” the nurse told me with an air of fascination.
Every time I see blood now, I think of Rio’s birth. There was so much blood that my midwives gathered it up and put it on a scale. They were afraid I’d lost too much, so they weighed it. I don’t remember how many kilos of blood it was. I just remember the concern in their faces. I remember looking down at my newborn baby’s head as they whispered to each other. Globs of blood were stuck in his hair, drying in dark patches on his scalp. I kissed it anyway. Without thinking. I kissed all over his body covered in blood and biofilm and amniotic fluid. He was irresistible.
Still is. Turning to face him this morning, I had to resist the urge to kiss his face. My eyes were burning for more sleep, but I resisted the urge to close them so I could watch him for just another minute. He was suckling on air, and smiling. Every so often, his eyes would blink open, he’d see me lying there, and his whole face would break open into a smile. The purest, most absolute form of happiness I’ve ever known. Then suddenly his body jerked, arms and legs reaching out, finding their way into my body again. Both feet nestled into my belly. Fingers wrapped around my arm. This is how it’s been since the moment he arrived. His limbs reaching out for me most of the day and all night long, secured to my body like branches of a tree.
Now I can’t resist anymore. I take Rio’s hand. He squeezes my middle finger but doesn’t wake.
Today is your birthday, I whisper. Your very first birthday.
Is that the new feeling I’d sensed earlier? Has the air somehow changed? Actually, it feels impossible that he’s already a year old.
Also, it feels impossible that he’s been with us for only one year. Even Axel said it the other day. We were looking at pictures from when he and Bastian were really small. “Mama, I know Rio wasn’t born yet, but it feels like he was already there.”
“I know what you mean,” I said.
When I try to reflect on life before Rio, I come up short. I went 42 years without him, only one year with him. But maybe that’s not entirely true. Maybe he’s always been with me somehow, and with his brothers too, carried in my body, like the soil holds seeds long before they grow roots and swell in the earth. Like an ecological memory. A vision for all I can become.
Now I don’t think I can go back to sleep. Something tells me it’s still too early. The light in our room isn’t harsh enough. The heat isn’t bulging behind the curtain. There’s still no birdsong. But I hear a toilet flush. Someone else is up too.
Gently, I peel Rio’s feet and arms from my body, tuck them into a pillow, roll off the bed without any sort of vibration – an act I’ve nearly perfected over the course of three children. I sneak out of the room, walking into the main room of the house. That’s when I understand what it is – that unfamiliar thing I’d sensed before even opening my eyes this morning.
Heavy fog hangs outside. It squats at our doorstep like a cloud. There’s no view out. No sea on the horizon. No forest covered hillside. No neighbors. Not even a wooden deck. Just dense fog pushing on every window, seeping through any crack it can find.
I’ve never experienced our house like this before. So far we’ve only stayed here on weekends, and every weekend has been bursting with color. It’s been the yellow house on our right, the white house on our left. It’s been an enormous blue sky stretching over yellow dandelions, red and purple tulips, apple blossoms, brown fields and green meadows, then forest all the way to sparkling sea. My eye is used to looking out, but the fog is changing my perspective. It’s making me look in.
Right now, every wall is lined in blue tape. Floors are covered in paper. Otherwise, there is a yawning emptiness. We haven’t moved any furniture here yet. We come on weekends, sleep on a floor mattress, make meals on one skillet. I’m longing to be here though. Fully here. The kids need to finish their last few weeks of school in our current town first. Until then, we’re in a sort of liminal space. Our stuff is there. Everything we know and were is there. But somehow our hearts have made their way here already.
Alfredo is already up. I hear him scraping at the walls with sandpaper. Yesterday we repaired tons of big holes in the walls. Now he’s sanding them down so we can begin painting today. I follow the sound until I see him standing on a ladder in his underwear. “Good morning,” he says with a smile.
I realize how much that smile means. It could have been a heavy sigh or a tired glare. Our bodies have been laboring from sunrise to sundown. We’re covered in bruises, scratches, dried blood and sweat that never seems to wash off. We’ve been pushing, pulling, carrying, scrubbing, hammering, drilling, draining. Often with a baby strapped onto our bodies, or a preschooler sitting on our shoulders. Despite it all, he gives me a smile that says, I’m ready for today. I smile back, hopefully with as much conviction.
“The boys still sleeping?” I ask.
“Yeah. Thought I should get a head start before the crazy begins.”
I nod. “I’ll start breakfast.”
_
By the time we finish breakfast, the fog is thin and opaque. We can see out, just barely though. It’s like looking through a pane of dirty glass that’s slowly being wiped clean. The clearer the air becomes, the more it fills with birdsong. There’s one bird here that doesn’t sound like a bird at all. It sounds alien in some way, like a drone. We don’t know what it’s called yet, but it never fails to get our attention. With each mechanical tune, Rio looks up and around. “What’s that?” I ask. He points skyward. I watch him toddle around, pushing any object that moves, and I feel the most immense gratitude for him. What a soul he is. What a year it’s been. I think he’s the one who got us here, actually. Out of the city, to this plot by the river, on the edge of a nature reserve. With sheep and chickens. With apple, pear, cherry, hazelnut, and oak trees. With elder, currant, raspberry, and rose bushes. To this hill where radishes sprout up from the ground, and then spring onions, and holy shit, is that asparagus coming up now? I think it is. Every day, a new being pokes its head up. And every time, I think of Christine.
Christine is the woman who lived here before us. She and her husband built this house. They filled this land with water, plants and animals. They had big visions, were moving big dreams into reality.
Then Christine got sick.
The day we got the keys to this house, her husband showed us around the property. I’d requested a tour of the land, eager to know what was rooted here, eager for any tips on how to become its caretaker. When he started pointing out things, I scrawled down notes.
NW top corner: 3 lilac, 1 pear, 2 apple, rhubarb, comfrey, watch for ?? , down the hill compost pile, watch for onions, kale in ground
NW from storage room: 2 elder, 3 apple, 1 pear, 4 currants (2 red, 2 black), last year potatoes in ground, hazelnut? mint below
I wrote as fast I could but gave up after about ten minutes. The tour went on for another hour. I had no idea what I’d asked for. No idea how much he and Christine had planted here, how many native plants they’d protected and tended to. Also, I had no idea how hard it must have been for him to give this tour on his own, without Christine.
I never got to meet her. And yet I feel like we’re occasionally talking, she and I. Or rather that I am calling out for her help.
Like yesterday. I went to water the plants in the greenhouse yet walked right into an enormous spider web. One web became another. A spider community has taken residence in there, their webs intersecting everywhere. The greenhouse is basically a spider’s den. Big black spiders too, their webs full of freshly wrapped meals. I needed more courage than I had. I thought about Christine. What would she do? Would these spiders have stopped her from watering the trees she planted in this greenhouse? The peach tree was especially dry. Leaves dropping like it’s already autumn. I’m not sure why Christine wanted a peach tree in Sweden, but to me, it represented her nerve. Her will to live against all odds. There was no way I could let that peach tree die from thirst, so I swatted at spider webs with my broom and kept my eyes peeled to the brick floor as I made my way to the peach tree and emptied my heavy watering can at its feet.
I was struggling to get anything in the garden watered. First the water hose was tangled in knots, and then the piece that screws into the faucet was broken, so water spewed everywhere when I turned it on. The faucet pulls water from the river and is located in the far lower corner of our property. Technically it’s on our neighbor’s property, so it was his land I flooded yesterday. I stopped everything, went to tell him. Then back to the hose, which I mended and untangled. I pulled the hose across his land, and then ours, to get to the driest corner where our little apple, pear and plum trees slumped over in thirst. Once there, I had to run all the way back to the neighbor’s to turn on the water. Then glory hallelujah, I was finally watering!
I got one small corner watered and then there was another problem. One of the connection points came apart so water now flooded our land, and not in a good spot. In fact, water ran all over the ground where we’ve stacked wood needed to finish building the back deck. And then there was the greenhouse, or the spider’s den I should say. And the kid’s hunger was turning into anger, and yes it was well past our normal dinner time, but dammit, I wasn’t even one-tenth of the way done with watering. “How long is this taking?” the kids whined. So when the hose got in a tangled mess again, I gave up and went inside to make dinner. By that, I mean I baked some frozen pizzas – the quickest way to stamp out the fire of hunger roaring in their little boy bodies. Then I needed to bathe them, bathe myself.
Rio was fussy all evening, no doubt a reflection of my own state. I picked him up and carried him outside where I could see the sea in the distance. All day it had been a strong blue color but now it was bronze. It shimmered on the horizon like something metallic. The moon hung above us, seemingly closer than the sea, a trick of the eye, a waxing gibbous, just a few days away from fullness. I stood there gazing out at the land and thought, How will I ever take care of this place? Beyond caring for what’s already here, I hadn’t gotten any seeds into the ground yet. It’s nearly June, and I hadn’t even pulled up all the weeds. Hadn’t mixed up compost or anything. My to-do list keeps growing, and time keeps slipping like water through my fingers.
Rio curled up on my shoulder, and I wrapped both arms around him. He began to hum, a low tone that reverberated through my entire body. There was something so familiar, almost primal, about his low timbre. I closed my eyes and let my body move with him. A gentle swaying, a slow dance. We moved until it felt like we were flowing. The spiraling thoughts in my mind began unravel, spiral the other way. Feelings of overwhelm began to fly out of me like birds, carried away by warm breeze, over the sheep relaxing in the grass, across the newly planted field, out to sea. And then I heard the words, You got this. It was barely a whisper. As if the blades of grass had spoken. Or maybe it was Christine?
Actually, I think it might have been Rio. His peaceful soul that has, in some mysterious way, been saving me from crippling self-doubt, over and over again, from the moment he arrived. We got this, he reminded me. Slowly, we danced under the late May moon until his humming turned into long, deep breathing. And then we slept.
_
After breakfast, we painted inside and tackled waist-high weeds outside until it was time for Rio’s nap. I strapped him in the carrier and walked towards the nature reserve. Bastian wanted to join us too, so he followed along at my side, picking me flowers and telling me which giant fir trees we should string lights on when it’s Christmas time. In just a couple of minutes, we came to the river.
“Should we walk beside the river or across it?” I asked Bastian. “Across it,” he said without hesitation. We crossed the wooden bridge and walked out into a meadow that stretches to the sea. Right now it appears to be a meadow of dandelions, but others will be arriving soon. I see the leaves of yarrow, and plantain, and clover, plus a few others I’m not familiar with yet.
The sun beat down hard on us. Especially in the open meadow without any trees to offer shade. The breeze would come later in the afternoon, but for now, there was no relief from the rays that seemed to press down on our bodies, squeezing us like oranges. Bastian’s body quickly started to droop. His eyes, so normally big and bright, were barely open at all.
“Should I take you home?” I asked. “Rio and I will be walking for awhile. Maybe it’s better for you to go home and help papa with the painting.”
“Otay mamma,” he said. Bastian can’t make the hard /k/ sound yet. It always melts me heart to hear him talk his way around this sound. Otay mamma is one I’ll miss immensely one day. Yookie instead of cookie is another one.
Once I get Bastian home, Rio closes his eyes. We stroll in patches of forest, chasing tree shadows to stand under, but still, sweat gathers in pools between his cheek and my chest. It drips down into my bra. As often as possible, I gently blow on Rio’s red face.
It’s a few minutes after noon.
Exactly one year ago, I was eating lunch when a midwife called to ask if I could come to the hospital at 3 pm instead of 2. Rio was 17 days late, and I was scheduled to be induced. I’d delayed the induction as long as I could. For more than a month, I’d done all the exercises, drunk all the potions, undergone two cervical sweeps, and every other possible thing you can imagine. I didn’t want to be induced. Didn’t want to force him, force anything. I didn’t want to lose control. I didn’t want to need help. I wanted to trust the baby, trust my body, trust life. That had been my motto with Axel and Bastian, both of whom were born 2 weeks late. But this time that 2 week margin had collapsed, and the baby still wasn’t coming. How long could I stubbornly go on? In what new way was this baby asking me to surrender?
After lunch, Alfredo and I walked around a nearby lake and then drove into the city, where we calmly found a parking spot, calmly got our hospital bag out of the trunk, calmly walked inside. It was all so ordinary, like going in for a routine check-up.
All three of my births were so different. With Axel, labor started in the deepest part of night and progressed quickly, leading to that dramatic taxi ride you see on TV, barely making it to the hospital on time and all that. With Bastian, labor started at the crack of dawn and progressed as naturally as daylight itself. I never left my bedroom. He was born at home in the most magical way that, to this day, still leaves me speechless. And now this. This totally new scenario. It was 3 in the afternoon on a normal weekday. This new life force was asking me to let go of everything I knew, everything I wanted. To potentially lose all control and face things that terrified me.
We got this, I’d said then. I’d been saying it all day. I’d said it while driving to the hospital. I said it again as the midwife put a needle and plastic tube in my wrist, in case medication was needed. And then again as I laid back on the hospital bed and spread my legs wide apart. The midwife walked over to me holding a long stick. There was a hook on one end of it. She put a mask over my face and told me to take deep inhales of laughing gas while she inserted that long stick through the middle of my body, used the hook to puncture the amniotic sac. We got this, baby, you and me. It didn’t hurt though. Not too much. Instead of pain, it was a release. The first of many releases I would experience in the following hour. With each rush of water, a big contraction followed. After a while, I couldn’t disconnect them. We got this, I said every time a contraction came. He was water, and I was the landscape he coursed through. He was making his way into a totally new world, and I was opening, opening, painfully opening. We got this. The contractions continued to grow. He was pushing at the edges, and my edges were being wrecked. We got this. The contractions grew so big, so fast, I couldn’t catch my breath between them. They rose like enormous waves that wouldn’t fall. We got this, or am I drowning? Then there was a tearing of flesh, a burning. He was crossing the ring of fire, and I was becoming the ring of fire. In all three births, this is when it felt like I met death itself, face to face. When the burning sensation grew larger than I could bear. When fire and fear is all I had left. Everything else faded away, even consciousness, and I met Rio’s soul somewhere, on some other plane of life, grabbed onto him, or maybe he grabbed onto me, I don’t know, I don’t even know where we were, I didn’t know if we were dead or alive, I was just trying to hold onto him, I didn’t want to lose him, and then suddenly the whole world came back in one giant surge. Rio was born.
One year later, I still like to walk by the river with him. I still let him sleep against my body too. People ask, when are you going to make him sleep in the stroller, or the crib? I don’t know. Right now I’m just enjoying the time. What’s the rush?
With Axel and Bastian, I was always anticipating the next thing. Especially with Axel. Waiting for him to soothe himself. Waiting for him to sleep without me. To wean. Get out of diapers. To not need me as much. But how much is too much? Rio isn’t any less needy than Axel was, but I don’t question it anymore. I don’t question him either.
In one way, it’s terribly inconvenient to stop everything and take Rio for a nap. It would be more productive to make him sleep alone in a crib at home with white noise machines and all. Then I could get shit done, you know. But then I’d miss all this…
The sound of his breathing, of wind in the trees, the river flowing over a row of stones. A spider swinging through the breeze on a long silk thread. The silk glints in the light. I trace the line all the way up, at least 6 meters, to a high oak branch. Bright green leaves are popping out everywhere. Oak, pine, fir, birch, all with fresh green tips. Below my feet is a carpet of purple violets. On the blueberry bushes, little pink buds are forming, so it won’t be too long now. Life continues to emerge. Slowly but surely. The land remembers what it was — knows what it can be.
Here comes the breeze. It shakes the plants. Shakes the light. Sends spiders flying. Birds soaring. There goes a bird now, wings outstretched but not needing to flap at all, just gliding on a current of wind. Rio is one now, and we are here. Maybe time isn’t scarce after all. I can see it now. Time is actually on our side.
It’s only our third weekend here. We have half a lifetime ahead.
xx
Happy summer solstice!!
I felt so many different things reading this! Just wonderful writing, Beth.