Life is made of small stories

November, 2024

Arlo is 2 months old

After a fussy evening at home with his Dad, Arlo took a much-needed nap resting on my chest in his carrier as I walked a figure eight, first looping around our dining room table, then around his play gym in the living room. I sipped red wine while talking to Kurt about the cringiness of woke boomers as I reflected on the first artist talk I had attended since giving birth, while he listened from the couch, eating a slice of pumpkin cheesecake I had brought home for him. After twenty minutes of grinding an infinity symbol into the floor, I finally cuddled up on the couch next to Kurt, watching an episode of “Shrinking” and feeding Arlo when he awoke. Upon finishing the episode and the feeding in tandem, Arlo was suddenly wide awake at 9 PM, staring at the twinkling LED lights inside the steel lanterns I made with a dear friend for our wedding nine years ago. Arlo’s smile grew into its goofy toothless grin as he stared at the twinkling lights. We cooed at him as he cooed at the lights. We stroked his face for more smiles, and sat there in awe of the wonder of life, breaking out into uncontrollable laughter as Arlo took a massive dumb straight into my lap, exploding the soft breastfed-baby-poop down the side of his right leg.

Motherhood has been a recalibration of sorts. What is it that matters in this life I’m living? For so long I have replicated the (probably American) cultural norm of seeking professional success as proof of my worth. Yet sitting on the couch with my beloved spouse and incredible baby, I was overwhelmed by the sense that this moment is as alive and worth holding with care and attention as any art project, job, or class. In writing this story, I hope to capture this moment not for the sake of the writing, but for the sake of being. To allow for a moment to be held in my mind precisely, no matter how small.

Steeping in the small moments in my daily life that now punctuate my days, I am exercising a muscle: living for living’s sake. This is a small revolution of my mind, a change like the work I am currently doing in physical therapy. As I do a glute bridge, I am trying to teach muscles to work that have never really worked, and the first part is just identifying they are there. Holding them for a few seconds. Over and over, until my body will engage them unthinkingly. So, too, do I hope this revolution can take hold in my mind. Perhaps I can grow to see my own practice in moving, making, eating, loving, nursing, and sleeping as part of the magic of my life, not interruptions, tasks, burdens, or distractions from the larger task of production and achievement.

As a person who is driven to make and to do, this is indeed a revelation and a revolution. This way of being implies that the things I am making first are my sense of curiosity and observation. In attempting to capture a small moment, of honoring it in text, I am both deciding and honoring where life happens.

Being a parent can feel like a sublimation of one’s life. Of choosing to be secondary. This daily dismissal of my needs in favor of the needs of this helpless child. And yet I chose to shift the pattern and energetic trance of my life by becoming a mother. Perhaps this shift is the key to unlocking something for me. I am living a daily battering ram to my ego, which I can resent or welcome. See this sublimating as actually a balm for the sense of worthlessness that can take hold of me, propelling me either towards a frozen state of overwhelm or to push harder to prove my worth.

As I hold my baby, who smiles at lights and whose major accomplishments these days are poops that explode beyond the borders of his diaper, I can see his worth and lovability, not because of the joy and love he brings me. Not even because of his warm body or even his beating heart. It’s evasive but it’s there. His worth and value are implicit; he need not produce anything to prove his value to me.

You may be thinking “But of course, no one expects anything of a baby… surely you have expectations for your child’s future. To grow, to work, to make the world a better place, to make money, to make love. Surely you are lying to yourself to imply you don’t value these things for your child’s life.”

This is not to say I am beyond these ideas. I surely will wrestle with myself for these next few years as I discern if my child’s capacity to read or befriend is more critical or worthy of my attention. But I am trying to hold an ideal, to resist the temptation to see life about our resume and more about our relationships.

As children many of us learn that our daily actions are in service of our future. Perhaps someone learned to cook and clean to, one day, be a good partner. Perhaps someone learned to study to get THE BIG JOB. Perhaps someone learned to manipulate in order to build and maintain power. As a child, I internalized the philosophy that the goal in all my actions was towards some distant objective, that I needed to optimize my life. I have lists I made as an 8-year-old, trying to manage my own daily existence, to make the most of each moment. I believed that the actions of the present were either towards my productivity, or a failing. I learned, through school, my peers, my parents, that the present was a domain that I must utilize practically, to ensure my dedication to the future was unquestionable and unfailing, lest anyone catch me idle. The present, then, was a sacrifice for the living that would take form. Eventually. Once I earned it.

To say I find no fault with my baby is not an exaggeration. And I hope I can maintain that feeling as he grows a head of hair and baby teeth and bigger teeth and armpit hair and acne. Because right now I see something clearly when I look at him - and that is the magic of life itself. Not for what he does or where he’s going but for the sheer fact of his existence. How the hell did I make a baby? A real live human? What is this if not the most real, visceral magic of my life?

Over the last ten weeks, I have bumped through each day with greater clarity, as the priorities from my past dissolve making way for a new pattern. I wonder if I can see my life as I see my child’s: magical and full of beauty, regardless of production. If my life matters beyond production, what does it mean to live?