This is what it looks like to have it all: my feminist primal scream

Sometimes I joke that I need to have a little too much wine, or a little too much depression to do my best writing. Today comes to you by way of a spicy Moscow Mule and spicier feelings. And I don't know that my writing will be any good (as evidenced by this poorly-written sentence), but this quote by Maya Angelou scrolled by on my IG feed as an email notification popped up informing me of yet another daycare closure for Covid symptoms, and I feel Maya's nudge to switch over to my notes app and scribble down my feminist primal scream and beg any unvaccinated friends to get the jab and make. it. stop.

"Each time a woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women."

The unvaccinated each undoubtedly has individualized reasons for turning down the shot, but a common theme is the conclusion that their decision's risk and impact begins and ends with themselves. But my view as a working mother of three, is that children and their mothers are still suffering the daily effects of those individual decisions that are allowing this pandemic to continue and evolve, and I, for one, am so, so tired.

Sometimes when I write, I think that I'm writing for my daughter, once she's grown. A window into the mom she can't know now, a mom with the context, nuance, and grace of an adult friendship. In an unexpected turn though, my old writing gives me that same window to know myself-- who I used to be anyway. Honestly, reading my poetic, butterfly-and-glitter feelings towards motherhood-- back when I was falling in love with my daughter, back when she was the only one-- can be hard for me to stomach. I just had no idea what motherhood would become... that it wasn't the work of one woman, and that it wasn't supposed to become all of me.

When I went back to work after my daughter was born, I wrote about gratitude-- how lucky I was to be fulfilled and inspired by motherhood and my career. I remember getting up at 3 or 4am after I nursed her in the middle of the night to begin analyzing graphs and getting caught up on other work, and sincerely thinking how lucky I was to have it all. And my only sadness was that I didn't have a mom-hatchet to split myself in two so I could live both of my "lives" 24/7.

That mindset is WILD to me now. Even more wild because I lived that middle-of-the-night work-shift for years before I started drinking coffee. Seven years, three kids, and a coffee-addiction later, I don't want to do it all anymore. But I do want need the support-- structural support-- to raise three good humans, and to have the opportunity to be a world-changer in my teeny-tiny corner of the world. And I guess it took the pandemic to show me the systemic failures of our society to support women. Do people even see us?

The irony and privilege in those words are not lost on me. My husband gave me a 5-year head-start on my career and was the primary caretaker of our kids for years; our families live across the country and still manage to come help bail us out when we're in over our heads, and when I finally accepted that I couldn't keep working without childcare or in-person public school, my employer granted an unpaid 12-week leave of absence (that fortunately, we could afford) even though legally, they were not obligated to do so since I had already used my federal leave and job insurance when I had a baby less than a year before. (I guess policy-makers didn't consider that the women who gave birth in 2020, also might struggle with childcare in 2020. I wonder how many white Boomer males overlooked that glaring error of omission?) When I returned to work in the spring, I managed to snag a promotion (how??) and with it, way more flexibility-- perhaps the hottest commodity to working moms.

Even with all of that privilege, the last 18 months have been brutal. 

Fortunately (or unfortunately?), most of my friends are also living in this unending purgatory with me. A few months into the pandemic, a good friend and I started texting each other pictures or stories of the ways we were "balancing" (what a joke) our 2020 careers with babies hanging off our boobs, and children hanging off of our backs, captioning them simply, "this is what it looks like to have it all," laugh-crying at how people look at us and mistakenly think we must have it all together. 

So in case you don't have multiple young children, and have not been living with the unbearable stress (the kind of stress that makes your hair fall out and your heart beat out of your chest) of unpredictable school and daycare closures, if you haven't spent part of your year writing letters to old white men at the top of prestigious institutions (I'm looking at you, Princeton Theological Seminary) begging for your childcare center to reopen (which ultimately closed permanently, forcing an all female staff, many women of color, to lose their jobs, because PTSem-- an institution with one of the largest endowments in the world-- no longer found it a financially worthwhile enterprise........ too bad for all of their students with young children), take a moment, I beg you, and imagine what it has been like for mothers and children. For nearly a year and a half. I dare you to send any of us a Pinterest board with new kid craft ideas, or worse, some vaguely encouraging cliche about how we will wish for these years back.

And in case you live in a part of the country that declared this pandemic over, before we've finished the work, I'd like to mention that during a 4-week run this summer, our daycare was closed all but 2 days-- once for a confirmed covid case (thanks to the one teacher who chose not to be vaccinated), and the rest because the Department of Health closes daycare classrooms EVERY TIME a child has 2 or more symptoms. To be clear, that means any time a baby, toddler, or preschooler has a runny nose and a cough within 72 hours of being in the daycare, the classroom is closed until they have a negative covid test + an alternate diagnosis (an upper respiratory infection is not an acceptable dx to reopen the room). Did I mention that we aren't reimbursed for these closures? And that our childcare bill is likely more expensive than your mortgage?

A few weeks ago, when Porter's classroom was closed again after reopening for a LAUGHABLE 2.5 hours, I spent his nap time on the phone with the DOH and gave my loudest feminist primal scream, proud of myself for only getting choked up once, and not using obscenities. The DOH director reiterated how they have to continue with these conservative policies to keep children healthy until community spread reached certain numbers, despite the harm to women and children. Then she gave me the number of the next person up the chain.

I guess my point is that I've done all I can do for myself, for my children, and for my family, but, as is the theme of motherhood, I can't do it on my own. This is not what it looks like to have it all.

Moon Song, by Kate J. Baer

"You are not an evergreen, unchanged 

by the pitiless snow. You are not a photo,

a brand, a character written for sex or

house or show. You do not have to choose

one of the other: a dream or a dreamer, the

bird or the birder. You may be a woman of 

commotion and quiet. Magic and brain.

You can be a mother and a poet. A wife and

a lover. You can dance on the graves you dug

on Tuesday, pulling out the bones of yourself

you began to miss. You can be the sun and the

moon. The dance a victory song."

 

 

You feel this too, right?

There must be some evolutionary reason that the fourth trimester is so vivid in my memory. Or maybe it's just that for once I'm completely present, FOMO at its most intense. Where the sunlight spills into the house in the afternoon, which flowers are blooming outside and which ones are dying, the phantom baby kicks inside my deflated belly, the places my body aches and bleeds pointing to the good work of birth-- I remember it all. It's an intoxicating way to live: the mindful fourth trimester.

But last year, my fourth tri landed in the middle of Before and After, as I've journaled about here. Somewhere in between memorizing the curves of Porter's face, the way his eyelids look like a line-drawing of angel's wings when he sleeps, and that searing sting of early breastfeeding, all the other "2020" memories are locked up and tangled in that postpartum haze too. And returning to that same bright winter sun can bring me to my knees if I'm not careful.

My PPD caught up with me around Porter's birthday-- an unlucky combo of PMS, the nagging feeling that my mind and body shouldn't *still* feel this postpartum a year later, and thumbing through pictures of his first seven weeks. Pictures of May holding him in the Groundhog's Day hat she colored at kindergarten, the same bitter cold of February school drop-offs where I fastidiously tucked blankets in his carseat, and signed my kid in tardy too many times. Even the pitch of his portable sound machine reminds me of the days we left the house without triple-checking for masks.

And then swiping through the other ten and a half months of his first year-- all of which happened within our own walls, or in empty parks, with our family of five. This inescapable reality that we are almost back to March 13, and my newborn is a toddler now, and my 6-year-old will dress up for her 100th day of "school" sitting at a desk in her bedroom, never mind the "remote learning" folder she brought home last spring. The left side was labeled "Week 1," the right, "Week 2," as if a pandemic could be neatly tucked into a paper folder. 

I try to tie things up when I write. Doesn't every story need a good denouement? ...Something I've learned, a nod to my Christian heritage, or even a metaphor that helps me move on. But, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I can't be alone, right? You all feel this too? And remember where the afternoon sunlight falls in February?