loon mom

on loons, briefly

Have you ever heard loon calls? In the wild or otherwise? It’s one of the most otherworldly sounds on earth. Take a gander at some of the tracks on this album of loon calls I frequent on spotify more than I’d like to admit.

When we were still just dating, my husband and I worked at a summer camp in the north woods of Wisconsin for a few summers. There was a lot of romance about that time, but what imprinted on me most indelibly, I think, were the loons. Their calls are the soundtrack of those summers in my mind. I remember evening canoe rides watching the loons duck underwater, trying to guess where they would come up again. They would disappear, then swim so far. The loons were so beautiful, so mysterious. I immediately felt a kinship with them.

I never saw a loon mother with baby loons in real life, learning later that mother loons carry their babies on their backs for a few weeks until they learn how to swim.

There’s so much I feel about all of this, so much I don’t know how to order into essay. I wrote a poem long ago about this, called “a new mother, I imagine myself a loon.” I wrote the poem just after my first child was born. This was before I knew about the piggyback situation, so the metaphors are now mixed a little, knowing what I know now. Two things to feel — like motherhood is a long swim underwater with held breath. Where will I resurface? Where will I be then? And another — with my child on my back, I am not able to dive like I am made to. I can’t feel what I long to feel, my solitary body swimming deep underwater, unseen and mysterious and myself. I have to stay afloat for them.

The loon call haunts. It is loud, booms across the water. It is resonant and disarming. What does it mean? Why is it so sad? I think in a way all my writing is that — instinctual calling across the water, singing a sad song no one asked to hear. Not sad, but complicated, layered with melancholy and beauty and something above or below language. The experience of motherhood as living nostalgia, as oversaturation of love and labor, of guilt and joy and time passing slowly and quickly, slipping through your fingers to add water to the lake, join the waterways of collective experience.

I haven’t been a good mom lately, or at least I haven’t felt like one. I’ve been often overwhelmed and shout-y. Entering new behavioral challenges with my toddler, combined with a mobile baby who is always trying to fall off of something. I feel very often out of my depth and like I am not coping well. I’m trying to practice self-compassion and also really quickly figure out how to do way better for them than I’ve been doing. Lots of repair, lots of re-directing myself toward giving everyone space to feel and get the feelings out and come back to each other in love.

But I feel like the loon! I feel like my kids are on my back and I love them so much, would carry them forever, but I just want to dive down and swim! I want to be alone, I want to be myself! Regulated, calm, myself! I want to swim very far away, so far that even I don’t know where I will pop up. I can’t do that. I feel so caged in sometimes by life with little children. I don’t know if other people feel that way, or if I’m just too sensitive. But I feel it. A little bit trapped. Bound by love and circumstance. Taking care of little kids is so relentless and I am exhausted. It feels bad to write that, because I love them so much. But it’s real. Taking care of little kids every day feels very hard right now.

So I’m singing my sad song. In a way, that’s all there is to do. And it’s a good way to cope, actually. To say it out loud, say it sad, say it resonant and haunting and strange. You, on the water, you will hear me, and you will wonder what is going on with that creature?

She’s a mother. She’s carrying her children, their whole bodies, whole souls. She is alive on the lake. And she will be ok.

I wrote about this before, very early in this newsletter’s existence, when I was just a few months postpartum for the first time. This is a little bit from that essay:

In motherhood, you must just expand, slowly. I guess you just get bigger. I’m small. I’m not very big. Little capacity. Little energy. It needs to get bigger. For the long pull underwater, slowly your lungs get a little larger, hold more air. Like pregnancy, all your organs shifting, quiet consent — yes, you can lessen the room in me for my stomach, yes you can separate my abs. The baby takes up so much space. The baby wakes you up. The baby needs you every three hours at the very least, pulls you down deep under the water. Have I relaxed for more than thirty minutes in four months? Have I come up for air? I can’t tell. No answer.

What strikes me is that now, more than three years later, I still feel like I haven’t really come up for air. I couldn’t have known then really what I was in for, how much strain toddler-parenting would but on my delicate nervous system, what it really means to be a sensitive young parent. Is it really any different now? Yes and no. I have gotten bigger, but I still feel too small. I’m better and worse at this. I’m more exhausted, less shocked.

Anyway, I’m just thinking about loons. No tidy conclusion. I’m very tired and a little discouraged, but continuing to swim and care for my family. We all love each other and that’s the lake we are on. But I mostly came here to tell you that I made the loon poem I wrote into an art print, and it’s available to you if you’d like to hang it on your wall. If you’re a loon mom like me, floating, wishing to dive. I want my babies on my back forever, and I want to be underwater, both at once. Both at once!

Here’s a link to the print in my shop. You can use the code LOONMOM for $2 off any order in the print/zine shop, for today only!

https://www.amybornman.com/shop/p/loonprint

Buying my prints and zines helps support my work as an artist and writer! Liking and sharing my work here and on Instagram helps a lot too.

Do you have an affinity for a certain animal’s maternal experience? I’d love to know! Leave a comment about that or anything else.

Much love from this loon mom, mixed metaphors and brain fog and all.