He isn’t here, but now someone else is, this thrilling splendiferous second baby, and like any mother I can’t imagine taking the smallest step from the historical path that led me here, to this one, to such a one.
Elizabeth McCracken

word + song + prayer
He isn’t here, but now someone else is, this thrilling splendiferous second baby, and like any mother I can’t imagine taking the smallest step from the historical path that led me here, to this one, to such a one.
Elizabeth McCracken
“Before we were conceived, we existed in part as an egg in our mother’s ovary. All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. Each of us spent five months in our grandmother’s womb and she in turn formed within the womb of her grandmother. We vibrate to the rhythms of our mother’s blood before she herself is born….”
— Layne Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women
Great epigraph to the new book by Ashley Audrain, The Push. As sweet as the above quotation is, the book is a suspenseful psychological thriller about a mother who increasingly suspects her daughter is dangerous. One of the blurbs on the back cover claims the book will set your nerves “jangling in both horror and recognition.” Gulp. Recognition. Is this what I’m in for, with our 14-month-old? Will I, like the narrator, wonder if her behavior is normal toddler antics, or something more…sinister?
My husband said he already worries our daughter has a mischievous side. I slowly set The Push down.
“What do you mean?”
“Like when she picks her nose even though she knows we don’t like it, or drops food on the floor.”
Phew.
Currently reading Heather Clark’s 1,118-page biography of Sylvia Plath. Was struck by this line:
“What are we fighting for? ‘For’ nothing. Against communism. That word, communism, is blinding. No one knows exactly what it means, and yet they hate everything associated with it. One thing I am convinced of: you can’t kill an idea.”
— Sylvia Plath, age 17, in a letter to a German pen-pal, August 1950
My combat veteran husband says much the same about “terrorism.” We can try to bomb it into submission, but you can’t kill an idea–and the bombing only makes it bloom elsewhere.
Sylvia Plath drew this, at age 13, for a 38-page school report:
If killing ideas doesn’t work, and killing people on our way to killing ideas doesn’t work, we’ll have to figure something else out.
I have a friend who somehow remembered (did she add a reminder to her phone’s calendar?) that this month marks two years since we lost our first baby to miscarriage. She texted to let me know she was thinking of me and remembering with me. Then she sent this song, which I’d never heard before:
Seems a helpful song for personal pain and for collective pain…something that can touch us as a country right now. (Also, has anyone else noticed how impossibly catchy songs are when they lapse into non-word lyrics?) Happy listening.
…and so yet again I have to try to find mercy inside pain, which is, as we both know, the work of a lifetime.
Brian Doyle, Eight Whopping Lies, p. 90
They would be teenagers now,
those crusted-nose, mismatch-socked,
pig-tailed grinning first graders.
On December 14 there were presents already
hidden in closets and drawers of dressers
or out under the tree
(Santa gives gifts
but so do parents)
and I wonder,
what did parents do with those gifts
after December 14?
Ten days ’til Christmas Eve.
Were siblings giddy on Christmas morning,
and then stopped and remembered?
Did a mother forget a gift she’d bought and hid
in the upper left cupboard above the washer,
finding it three years later when the family packed to move
from Sandy Hook to Anywhere Else,
and with the thud of sudden remembrance
found herself trembling,
scraping at the tape,
sure and unsure of what was inside?
Last year at this time, I was nursing a two-week-old and trembling, tossing, turning with anxiety instead of sleeping. A friend sent me a poem by Kaitlin Hardy Shetler, who asks if Mary breastfed Jesus and struggled with a painful latch. My phone shows I screenshot it at 3:17 a.m.
3:17 a.m. is a time stamp familiar to those nursing newborns and grinding their teeth into the night guard they wear, familiar as well to those lying not sleeping nearby. I saved the poem because I felt it saved me.
Six hours later I took this photo:
It wasn’t the only milk stain photo I would take in those upended first weeks.
And yes, visits to a lactation consultant can help, but the reality of nursing can look very different than the paintings of a serene Madonna.
Here’s the full poem, with link below:
sometimes I wonder
if Mary breastfed Jesus.
if she cried out when he bit her
or if she sobbed when he would not latch.
and sometimes I wonder
if this is all too vulgar
to ask in a church
full of men
without milk stains on their shirts
or coconut oil on their breasts
preaching from pulpits off limits to the Mother of God.
but then i think of feeding Jesus,
birthing Jesus,
the expulsion of blood
and smell of sweat,
the salt of a mother’s tears
onto the soft head of the Salt of the Earth,
feeling lonely
and tired
hungry
annoyed
overwhelmed
loving
and i think,
if the vulgarity of birth is not
honestly preached
by men who carry power but not burden,
who carry privilege but not labor,
who carry authority but not submission,
then it should not be preached at all.
because the real scandal of the Birth of God
lies in the cracked nipples of a
14 year old
and not in the sermons of ministers
who say women
are too delicate
to lead.
– Kaitlin Hardy Shetler
In honor of International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, here is an interview I did for the Love and Loss podcast, all about our miscarriage:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/love-loss/id1513597899?i=1000493167957
Really honored to be able to share our story.