This past weekend, I took nine-and-a-half-month-old Ben with me on a trip to my college for a big 50th anniversary celebration and reunion for the theater program I was a part of. A large gathering, nearly 200 people spanning the full 50 years. He’s still nursing around the clock and doesn’t take a bottle or formula — I didn’t really have a choice. If I was going to go, he was coming with me. And I was going to go!
We road-tripped the seven-ish hours there with two friends. I was a ball of anxiety before we left, trying to imagine and plan for every eventuality. Every parent knows that trips with kids aren’t vacations, they are simply parenting somewhere else. I felt even more strange knowing that I was possibly or probably going to be the only person with a baby at the reunion for most of the time. Most of the alumni around my age don’t have kids yet. Some local friends with kids were going to bring their little ones for some of the events, but as far as I knew I would be the only one with a baby strapped to me for essentially the whole thing.
Only once conspicuously mothering in the midst of others did I realize that this is a very rare occurrence for me. I tend to mostly parent my children at home — or if we are out and about we are typically in spaces that are either child-centric or easy to blend into. Like the playground, the library, Target. But here, just as I suspected, mine was most often the only baby in the room. I was certainly not the only mother in the room — but the other mothers’ babies and kids weren’t there. Everyone was delighted to have me and my baby, but I felt very self-conscious much of the time. Simply being beheld is kind of a lot to bear. I was surprised to be struck with the feeling of exposure — shame mixed with pride. Too much visibility.
Everyone loved my baby, Ben, and he loved everyone. I felt grateful for my easy conversation starter and ender, my little partner-in-crime. In an exciting and happy but socially overwhelming experience, I was always accompanied, always able to keep busy. And he did great! He rarely cried or fussed, was so excited by all the hubbub and new people to woo and watch. Of my two children, Ben was the right baby for the job. Infant Tommy never got the chance to test himself in a crowd, being born in December of 2020, peak pandemic, but I expect he may not have been quite so calm and agreeable about the experience given his current sweet sensitivity.
So, all things considered, it went great. But I was surprised at how many feelings and thoughts it brought up in me. I think I experience a lot of cognitive rigidity — it takes a lot for me to change my mind or see things from new angles. Seeing myself and my baby in an intense new context allowed me new perspective that I don’t think I could have accessed otherwise. It was a new chance to witness myself in my mothering, and to orient myself among the others in a different room, outside my home.
One thing I felt more than I would like to admit was longing. So many times I would look around and just want to be a person like everyone else. Not a mom, not a caregiver, but a free agent, a discrete and distinct person. I felt longing seeing all of my friends sitting on the floor at the evening program while I had to stand and sway or pace in the back. My friends, in command of their own sitting and rising, going in and out. I was on edge, barely able to focus on the speakers, because my lightly-sleeping baby kept jolting every time people clapped. I wanted to listen, I wanted to be there, to relax and be present. To take care of a baby is be governed by someone else’s needs, to forsake your own. I didn’t feel bitter, but I did feel exhausted and somewhat caged by necessity. I felt longing when I couldn’t stay for the late night dancing because we were already out too late and the baby wasn’t sleeping well enough in the carrier. I felt longing within my body’s exhaustion, wishing to be less foggy, less weighed down.
But, writing this, I wonder if someone or a few people felt longing looking at me? Someone sitting there seeing me take care of my baby thinking that’s what I want? I want to make space for that inverse of my own feeling.
I was in a place where I feel very comfortable, with people who I know to be among the most safe and accepting I have ever known. But still, I felt anxious to be disruptive or to inconvenience anyone with the presence of my baby. At one point, I boldly brought my baby with me to a session of Workout, the hour of ritual and theater(ish) games that we had all participated in twice a week in college and were getting to return to especially for the reunion. Everyone signed up for a session, it was a whole thing, a special part of the reunion. I had planned to just bring Ben with me, no big deal, but walking into the room what had seemed like it would probably be fine immediately felt like a potential mistake. The serious mood of the room, seeing everyone else at the beginning of the session so quiet, focusing, preparing — my baby on my hip felt like a grenade that could explode at any moment. At no point did I feel more exposed than then.
But even writing this, I remind myself — I was among friends. I was among other parents, just without their children present. I was with one of my dearest teachers, Mark, who I know cares about me. I had nothing to fear. But I was still afraid — afraid that to show up as my true self in this moment of my life, my self accompanied by my baby, was too much. The eye-roll or sigh I was fearing was never going to come, not in this space, so why did I brace myself for it?
Instead, Ben became a part of the room, just like everyone else. In fact, we were wholly embraced. I could see the delight on others’ faces, engaging him in the experience without doing too much or making it about him. Comfort. Acceptance. Just as I know that room to be. A couple of people told me later that they were so glad he was there. But still, it was really hard to be a mother in that place. It was hard to be the one in charge of the only baby in the room. I felt like a raw nerve. I cried a few times in the session, which I never really used to do in Workout. But tears are welcome there, even normal! My experience was not as visible or novel as I felt it was. It belonged more than I could have expected.
At one point, we played a game called “opposition” — where you are walking across the room and someone steps into your path and keeps you from moving forward somehow, “opposing” you. I was walking, holding my baby, and Mark said to the room as part of his running instructional monologue the phrase, “holy impediment”. It was the text I needed to hear, the poem to contain the unnameable feeling. So that’s when I really lost it. Walking with my arms full of my baby, my own holiest impediment, feeling opposed in every moment by my responsibility to him, to myself. When I was in that room in college I was no one’s mother. My teacher got in my way, blocked my path while I held my baby and wept away some of the tension I couldn’t carry anymore. Yes, ok, you can see me this way. You can see me exhausted mother. You can see me impeded. It’s ok to be witnessed. It’s ok to be seen. He moved to the side and I walked on.
Everyone in the room, I’m sure, had something huge and immovable in their life spring to mind when he said the words “holy impediment.” Everyone was being opposed. I just happened to be holding my own holy impediment in my arms. It broke something open in me, some truth I’d been trying not to tell to myself. I am impeded. My children have so forcefully gotten in my way. To put it that way makes it sound bad, but I don’t think it is. I think of this Wendell Berry poem, called “Our Real Work”:
It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed! The impeded stream is the one that SINGS! Ok! I get it! Transformation! Ugh!
I don’t know really what to do with all of this. The whole weekend was a lot to process — seeing so many old friends, people I’ve kept up with, people I haven’t. People who make me feel good, people who make me feel guilty. Being back in probably my favorite building in the world, our theater, layers of memories spackled on every surface. My friend described it as being in the same room as our own ghosts — our former selves haunt that place, and probably always will. A reverence, grieving, longing, all of that. I was processing all of those feelings, and trying to keep my baby alive. Those were two very separate projects. But we contain multitudes, don’t we? At one point, I took a moment and looked at my son in the eyes and told him, “Thank you so much for being here with me. I will remember it forever.”
I don’t think it was easy for him to be there, not just a given. As a mother, I’m always trying to weigh my needs against the needs of my children, and most often my children’s needs win out, as they ought to in this season. But, in this case, my needs were sometimes trumping my baby’s in ways that felt uncomfortable. Like the late nights because the programming for the reunion went quite late — feeling terribly guilty looking down at my overtired and overstimulated baby trying to fall asleep in the the carrier in too loud and too bright an environment. The missed or late naps, the less-than-ideal nursing scenarios, the lack of appropriate space to feed him his messy baby foods like I usually would. My discomfort reminded me of something comforting — I usually take very good care of my babies. But that didn’t make the disruption to our usual routine any easier on either of us. I think Ben was actually fairly comfortable. He spent much of the time literally touching me, so in terms of baby regulation that’s pretty much all they need. But I felt bad. I felt like I was parenting badly in a way that felt too visible to others. When others saw my baby inexplicably awake at 10 pm as the evening program was ending, I felt like there was a neon “BAD MOM” sign shining right above me. I don’t think anyone actually thought that, or maybe they did and it doesn’t matter — but my own self-consiousness is the thing that surprises me and is my takeaway from that particular feeling. I didn’t know how much of my precarious identity as a mother depended on my flawlessly responding to every need my babies have. I found myself reluctant to even let others take the baby off my hands for a couple of minutes, suddenly feeling clingy. I am not as chill about mothering as I thought I could be. I guess I’m not chill at all.
If I think about it with self-compassion, I can remember all the people at the reunion who have known me a long time who delighted in my baby, and in seeing me anew as a mom. I can remember the other moms (children no longer babies) who came up to me saying, "he’s doing so well” — the subtext being “you’re doing so well, too.” No one was thinking of me as critically as I do. Amazing how much and how little my mothering means about me in the grand scheme of things. I’m still myself, still “Amy.” Do I feel that way? Everyone I encountered wanted to encourage me, or even just to say hello to me and chat — no big deal that I’d brought my baby, not at all. I don’t think anyone was worried about my baby except for me. They saw a dyad, a mom with her baby close to her chest. A not-crying baby sleeping or almost asleep. A specter bouncing ad-infinitum in a dark corner of the room. A nothing. A ghost. No, it only all mattered to me, didn’t it?
I am so glad I went. No, I’m so glad we went. It wasn’t easy or comfortable, but I really will remember it forever. And I needed this opportunity to return in the midst of my new impediment to a place that mattered to me long before even the dream of my children emerged. Changing a diaper in the women’s dressing room, a place I spent dozens and dozens of happy hours, I said to a friend, “I don’t think I ever imagined that someday I would be changing my baby’s diaper in this room when we were here.” It’s thrilling to grow up, thrilling to change. And thrilling to return so obviously different that I was before. All my change strapped to my chest, demanding my attention, making me feel exposed and awash with emotions I have never felt before. I am an impeded stream, singing! Singing!
I don't have a baby yet and I also cried! That Wendell Berry poem really got me. I am there.
Amy, your writing is maybe my favorite on Substack. When I get a notification of a new piece of yours in my inbox, I go read it right then. I so appreciate your honesty. You are candid, but accepting of your reality. Thank you thank you thank you.
Tears welled up and spilled over at the “holy impediment” section. Love this experience for you, so much. I was a musical theater kid and had many a cathartic vulnerable moment among teachers and friends. The idea of being witnessed as a mother in that space, after being a pandemic mom too and not even realizing how unseen I really was, touches me deeply. Thank you so much for sharing and so glad you and Ben got to do this!