Waiting for It to Pass

As I walked toward the hospital, I paused every once in awhile to wait for the contractions to pass. I was now unable to walk through them. I remember holding on to iron fencing at Fordham's Lincoln Center Campus as the pain grew more intense. New Yorkers are great. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. A couple of people stopped and asked me if they could help me. I said I would be fine once the contraction passed and that I was almost to the hospital. Now some folks probably think I was nuts to do this. But it seemed perfectly reasonable to me. I had been "training" for a natural birth so everything I knew was about moving through labor. I hoped this walk would make the baby come sooner. It was at the gates of Fordham that I did have some doubts about my plan though. At that point what else could I do? I kept putting one foot in front of the other. I don't remember much more of the walk after I had held on to the gate. My focus turned inward and the city melted away.

Lavender Roses and a Labored Walk

I left the midwives' office excited but nervous and commenced my pilgrimage down Broadway from 71st Street. The contractions were beginning to get more intense. As I passed a florist I decided to stop in quickly and buy myself some flowers. I knew that would be the farthest thing from Bob's mind and I thought they might make a nice focal point in the birthing room. I bought three lavender roses. They are my favorites because of the smell - sweet and tart all at once. As I stood online to pay a contraction hit me. It became pretty obvious to the florist shop attendant and the man in line ahead of me what was going on. They both wanted to put me in a taxi, but I told them I was walking, it wasn't far and this way I would probably have the baby sooner. I thanked them for the roses as I headed out to continue my walk downtown and west to 59th Street and Tenth Ave.

Getting to the Midwives

I called Bob to tell him about my water breaking and increasing contractions. Velma answered the phone at the Catholic Boys high school where he was teaching in the South Bronx. He shocked everyone, but not me, by saying he would leave as soon as he finished his bagel. I told him to come home, pack up my stuff in the taxi and I would call with info on where I'd be. I was off to the midwives' office. They wanted to check on me before having me go to the birth center at St. Luke's Roosevelt.

I arrived at the midwives' office via subway from the lower east side to the upper west side. It was packed with pregnant women. I was the only one in labor and expected to be treated IMMEDIATELY. Instead they had me sit in the waiting room for 45 minutes. I sat there quietly figuring they just wanted the labor to progress. Finally they called me in. It was Sandy, one of my favorite nurse midwives, that examined me and told me I was four centimeters dilated. She said I should go to the birthing center. I could either take a cab there or walk so that I could move my labor along more. The distance was just under a mile (but I did not know that then). I opted to walk.

happy mama day - part one: and so it begins

Wow. Nine years ago today my water broke in our apartment building's elevator. My contractions had started and I wanted to get one more load of laundry done before heading to the hospital (little did I know how much little miss overachiever would be challenged in the years to come). I was riding the elevator down to the laundry room with the least friendly man in our 12 story building. I just kept praying he would not realize what was happening as water rushed down my legs. It felt like a gushing rapids headed for the falls, but he did not blink an eye. Had it been any of our little lady elderly neighbors - Freida, Sarah, Ginny - I certainly would have told them. They were so excited about the arrival of this new little one.

Five years later as we were moving out, I told that neighbor, Tom, about that fateful day and his role in it. He smiled. Over the years he had loved watching Max play sports in the playground and talked about my little man becoming a major league athlete of some sort one day. Tom was there in the elevator on and off as Max gradually grew taller and was finally able to press the 2 button for our floor. Tom had changed a lot over the years.

Happy Mama Day!

It used to be on the birthdays of our children my friends and I would always arrive with flowers for the mother. We all celebrated the fact that the day was a special one for us as well. Every year without fail, I mark my son's birthday by remembering what took place at each hour or so on the day he was born. This year I am going to keep vigil here as well. I have never written the story down though is it a well worn tale in our house as Max loves to hear about the day he helped us to become a family.

Max turns nine today. Me too.

becoming mother

In pregnancy there were pivotal moments when I realized I was being shaped into becoming a mother. One of the most profound moments of this ontological shift happened as I prepared to cross the street at Columbus Circle. Becoming a mom to one child is so much bigger than we ever imagined. In this shift of becoming amother we, on some level, become mothers to the world. We are never again the same. I will always thank this man who mediated the grace of this profound change in me.

Emerging from the depths of the number 1 train, I stand at Columbus Circle waiting to cross Broadway. The winter winds slap my coat around my tired ankles. My appointment today is for 3:30pm. Today I will see the baby via sound waves. Will I give in and beg to be told whether I am carrying a boy or a girl or will I not feel the need to know?

My busy thoughts are interrupted by a coatless, homeless man with a hunched back standing on the curb. His expression is of someone who has been beaten down so often that he is incapable of ever standing straight again. His eyes are vacant and unseeing. He’s dark, too – not the color of cocoa or chocolate but black like coal before it’s lit. As he lingers dangerously close to the street, I notice a trail of drool pouring out of his mouth in one long continuous strain. It never breaks as he swivels from side to side looking for a gap in the traffic. I am embarrassed and ashamed to be witnessing this much pain, but I can not look away.

I am certain he shined the day his mother gave birth to him. Perhaps it was a hard rough labor. The pressure of energy swirling about trying to move this piece of raw material through the earth’s crust into the light of day was almost unbearable. But oh how that baby glowed! All wet and gooey, he struggled to give sound to a voice that had never been heard in this world – his own. And a tired mama, offered her breast to his lips, trusting that her body would feed when every other part of her groaned for rest. She held him tight and loved him.

I don’t know what transpired from that day on. How did he come to be a homeless man standing on the corner of 60th and Broadway with a string of saliva reaching down to the depths of the very earth he emerged from fifty years ago?

Today I am no longer a fellow city dweller watching a homeless man on the verge of self- medicating himself to death. Instead, this baby moving in me leads me to the realization that in becoming a mother everything is changing. Standing here what I know to be true is this man’s sacredness. We are all children of God. No exceptions. Now, though, I feel it so completely I find little separation between me and this man standing next to me. We are one.

This little baby growing in me is teaching me that all we are really asked to do is to love this world. On this bitter Broadway street corner, I feel a mother’s love and I see this homeless man as someone’s precious baby: loved and cherished and perhaps my own.

For the light and dark are both alike to you

For the darkness and light are both alike to you….
Janet Morley


A baby is born. Light enters the darkness.

Where will the light of your new child shine?

What is the darkness that the babe will illuminate?

Our child uncovers a capacity within us for love so deep that we find spaces in ourselves that we never knew existed. The baby also brings what is dark within us out into the light. This darkness has many faces – anger, frustration, fear, inadequacy – whatever is hidden in our shadow. Before becoming a mother, it was much easier to hide from ourselves and those around us. Motherhood is an invitation to see through our self-deception and illusion.

As mothers we are graced with the opportunity to come to know who we are through the intimacy we share with our child. No one will bring us greater joy or greater pain than the child that took shape within us.

In the best of circumstances we come to terms with who we are – as mothers, as women, as human beings. Sometimes we are broken; sometimes we are radiant. We are always real. Motherhood opens new doors to find out who we really are.

Giving and Taking

“A woman is a vehicle of life – life has overtaken her – a woman is what it’s all about: the giving of birth and the giving of nourishment. She is identical with the earth goddess in her powers and she has got to realize that about herself.”

Joseph Campbell
Power of Myth

Giving birth. Giving nourishment. Before our children were born did we have any idea how much we would give? It’s hard to feel oneself akin to the goddess when covered in spit-up and branded with dark circles under our sleepless eyes. The constant clamoring for every ounce of our attention is exhausting.

At times we question whether this is really giving at all or rather the taking of our very being. It’s precisely the tug between giving and taking, being and doing, loving and hating, laughing and crying that cultivates a fruitful growing place. Our most painful and challenging moments are just as important as the tender and joyous ones in making us fertile ground for our children. We are not asked to dictate the shape, color or texture of their flower, but to be the soil from which they can take root, be nurtured, and grow.

Understanding the dualities inherent in mothering and embracing the many forms they take in our lives, no matter how difficult, is an important step in honoring ourselves and the goddess power we possess.

the glory of motherhood

With what price we pay

for the glory

of motherhood.

Isadora Duncan

etching by Deborah Madis Lader

Spider Woman in my Bathroom Drain

While brushing my teeth in my normal mad dash to get my son to school and me to work in the morning, a small black spider walked out of the drain and tried to jump out of the sink. Instinctively, I pushed her down and let the water take her back down the drain.

Right before the water swirled her back into the hole from which she came, I thought "Shit, is this a sign?" I grabbed by Medicine Cards book to look up the meaning of pulling the Spider card. Spider medicine represents our creativity. "Great!" I thought , "I just flushed my creativity down the drain." I also took a look at the Pueblo story about the creation of the world. Yup. Spider Woman. She wove all of creation from the web of her thoughts. For those of us interested in the divine feminine we know that both the spider and the snake are part of our heritage. Both have deep feminine roots and yet both are often instinctively rejected. I don't have time to go into our deep-"seeded" phobias (dare I say self-loathing), but I knew as soon as I sent that spider down the drain, I had rejected, without even thinking, some part of myself. What gave me the most pause was how little thought, how unpresent, I was to that morning moment in the bathroom. Some of you will think I am nuts - all of this because of a spider? Perhaps. But I believe it is precisely through small moments like this that the sacred feminine shows her face to us. Are we moving too fast to notice?

I spent the morning occasionally come back to this idea. How have I been killing my creativity lately? Seriously, are those late night guilty pleasure of CSI and L&O really bringing me closer to my source? Am I slowing down enough to notice life as it unfolds? Just noticing my life in the moment is a way to bear witness to the sacredness of the day and my little life. No need to do, just to be.

So the next morning I started to wash my face. Out of the drain came my second chance. My little spider appeared and tried to climb the side of the sink, but kept falling backwards. This time I gently let her crawl up onto my hand. I could barely feel her; she was so light. I lifted her out and set her onto the counter. Guess what? I haven't seen her since.