Planting Dandelions Read Online Free PDF Page A

expecting: the utter, unavoidable loneliness. Because no matter who’s there standing by, pregnancy is a place you go all by yourself, just as my mother-in-law was going somewhere all by herself. Both of us moving deeper into the darkness, deeper into the holy. Not two doors to the hallway after all, but the same door, opening out and in.

    I decided I wanted a home birth. People thought I was brave, if crazy, but the truth is, I fear and loathe hospitals. My only reservation was that our bedroom at home might be less than sterile.
    â€œCompared to a hospital room?” the midwives asked. “Are you kidding? Just think about everything that’s been on those beds and floors.”
    I preferred not to. I had a weak stomach when it came to things that oozed, spewed, or were extruded from other people’s body cavities. So much so, I could hardly utter the words “snot,” “puke,” “poop.” I hoped I’d be inured to my own baby’s bodily emissions, but I seriously worried I might not. I had way more confidence in my ability to handle labor pains than I did in controlling my gag reflex during a diaper change.
    The first signs that I might not be cut out for the sensory reality of motherhood went back as far as my sister Emily’s birth in 1973, when I was four. Throughout my mom’s pregnancy, I’d been led to believe I was getting a real live doll to play with on demand. When the baby came home, and wasn’t immediately turned over to me, I felt robbed, like an expectant adoptive parent whose surrogate had, at the last minute, changed her mind. One early morning, when I heard Emily stirring in her crib before our parents were up, I decided to go claim that which was supposed to have been mine.
    I crept in, and hoisted her out of her crib.
    â€œI’ve got you,” I reassured my sister, who smiled at me with total confidence. My baby. “I’ve got you now.”
    I set her on my hip, expertly. From here, there was nothing I couldn’t handle. I would dress her, take her downstairs, get her breakfast, raise her to adulthood. Our parents could sleep for a hundred years. I was the mommy now.
    Something smelled bad.
    â€œI’ve got to change your diaper,” I told her. I’d seen it done a hundred times. How hard could it be? You unsnapped her pajamas, pulled this tape away here, and that tape away over there, and . . . ewww. I left her for my mother to find.
    As a little girl, I assumed I would grow up and have babies someday, but I saw them as accessories. Motherhood was a “look,” like superstar or beach bunny was for Barbie. I pictured myself as a glamorous mother, a swish of skirts and a cloud of perfume, benevolent but remote. When I watched The Sound of Music , I rooted for the elegant Baroness, not goofy Maria, who was warm and funny like my own mother. My imaginary adoring children didn’t have runny noses, or stinky diapers, or heaven forbid, throw up, as my sister did anytime she rode in a car for more than fifteen minutes. Whenever her motion sickness forced us to pull over, I slid to the window farthest away from her and covered my ears, but retched anyway, just from the idea of it. Particles of dry vomit were permanently embedded in the fake weave of the vinyl that covered the backseat of our Volkswagen Beetle, and when the summer sun warmed it, a faint sour smell was released that nauseated me. My stomach hadn’t strengthened with age. What was going to happen when my own baby vomited? How was I supposed to care for him if it made me gag myself? I hoped that evolution had it covered.
    It did, not only through the provision of a bonding instinct that overrides squeamishness, but through the act of birth, so messy it leaves the mother no room to wrinkle her nose afterward at the natural bodily functions of the person who emerged through it. Patrick assumed—mistakenly—that the amnesty also extended to him.