A Feeling from the Past

“Is you mother going to be there to help you during labor?” a fellow crunchy (if significantly more pushy), acquaintance, who knows I’m planning to try and go natural, recently asked me.

“No,” I told her.

“Oh, she lives too far away?”

“We’re not very close,” I explained.

“Oh, my mom couldn’t make it to my homebirth, but she came a few days later. It was so helpful. You should see if you mom would come to help you out afterwards, even if you don’t want her there during the birth.”

There was going to be no easy wiggling out of this one.

I ‘fessed up.

“My parents are just not into this whole thing – my life, the baby. They’re fundamentalist Jews, and I, obviously—“ (gesturing to my shorts and tanktop) “am not. So we really don’t have that kind of family connection.”

She nodded her head sympathetically.

“Oh, how hard. No matter what kind of relationship you have, birth is really one of those times you want your mom to be there for you.”

I’ve been an orphan for so long, I almost forget what it feels like to have parents. In my daily life, I don’t miss them. The scar they left by leaving has been healed and long covered over.  But this women’s words cracked me across the scull. “One of those times you want your mom to be there.” THIS? The joyous occasion of welcoming my child together with my loving husband, this is when I want my mom?!!!

Oh no no no, there have been hundreds of times I have wanted my mother, cried for my mother, could have desperately used the love of a parent. So many long dark nights, so many soul scraping decisions, so many painful realities, where I wanted my mother there. THIS? This is the least of it.

I blinked back tears and just smiled and let it go.