When I first became a mother
/// multitudinous mothering entity /// A mother who moves through the world and navigates spaces while attached to or in close, physical proximity of her children. Italicized words expanded on in the Glossary.
When I first became a mother
by Mother Mother Binahkaye Joy
Once upon a Mother Mother, on the beach at sunset, Seminyak, Bali
I don’t know how to start at the beginning. It’s all the beginning. Right now. Yesterday. 10 years ago. 20 years ago. When, when, when? The choices are infinite.
When did I become a mother? There are many points that come to mind. Vivid memories, and fragmented ones too, they cascade down from the heavens and pool around my feet. There are bits and pieces of stories. There are clumps of dialogue. It is mashed up in some places, distinct and absolute in others. Standing in the center of this shower, I feel intense sensations all over, the expansion of hope, the warmth of love, the constriction of fear— all of these, once and always, springing up at the thought of being a mother.
In one scene I am walking to the metro after making waters with One. It has only been our first or second time. We have not used any barriers—I never wanted that kind of separation for such an intimate communion. He feels he has mastered holding back his release. I have little knowledge of such things, that such control is even possible. He seems amused by my questions. I am concerned and intrigued by the idea that our act could have created a new life. He laughs it off, and I ignore how small it makes me feel to have such a precious thing, such precious things—my fertility, my body, my life— be a joke to him. I ride the 13 stops home on the train by myself. I imagine for the first time what my life might be like if I am somebody’s mother.
In another scene, a year later and 12 time zones away in Bali, I meet Crystal, and she’s got a baby on her hip who she birthed intuitively after traveling the world and feeling for where her baby wanted to be born. She is radiant and beautiful, and we have a deep spiritual connection in a short time. A seed of sistership takes root, and I am overcome by the abundance of possibility. Suddenly motherhood seems so doable inside of, rather than opposed to, my dreams of being an artist who is dancing around the world. I can move around this Earth with my babies. In time I will come to call this moment the conscious revelation of my motherself.
In the next scene, almost a year later again, I am living with One in a house with too many people. Over a breakfast of granola and almond milk, on a bright Saturday morning in early spring, one of my roommates shares that her and her partner are expecting. I am instantly filled with something bright and luminous, but for which I don’t yet have the words. I feel my heart swelling with love at the thought of my own fertile possibilities. I feel something sweet and tender rising to the surface. Eagerly I go back upstairs to the room I share with One. He laughs so hard when I tell him our roommates’ good news. When I don’t join him in the laughter, he looks at me incredulously. He laughs even more when he connects the dots: that I wish this was our story too. He contorts his face, like he has just stepped in dog shit, and now his shoe is going to stink all day. It is clear we want different things. But still I drag our entanglement out for another year and change before our final goodbyes.
Lifetimes ago, feeling so beautiful out on the town with One and friends
In another scene, many months later, I am racing down the street, dodging rush hour foot traffic, trying to get to the clinic before they close. They do free pregnancy tests. My cycle hasn’t come. I am at once thrilled and horrified by the thought that I might finally be pregnant, but not with One’s child. The nurse tells me congratulations. I leave there and head to a performance for a youth program I’m working with. I dance a prayer song for my baby, and the audience cheers and the drums roar, even though I don’t know what will become of our uncertain futures.
The next scene, just weeks later, I’m back at the clinic. I have cried and deliberated and prayed and written letters to my starseed. I have given them a name. I am devastated by the choice I am making, and I am terrified of having Two’s child. I will have nightmares and panic attacks about him for years to come. Awful as I feel, I realize this is also a mother’s holy labor. This is my first real act as a mother. The technician asks me if I want to see the ultrasound, and I say yes. It’s the least I can do before the parting of our physical ways. The heart is beating. She prints out a photo for me. In the recovery room their are about 20 other women. I am the only mother sobbing inconsolably.
Tracing these stories, traversing so many parallels of time, takes a special kind of energy. The heart stretches backwards and forwards reliving these miraculous, scary, magical, despairing, heartbreaking, soul-shattering, soul-lifting, life-changing scenes. Each one a moment shaping, impacting, shifting everything else that is to come. It takes such courage to be here, and this is just me putting my toe in the water. The stories are calling me to the waters: Leap! Dive in. Go deep and share it all.
This is just the one body I have, after all. No story is ever lost from me, even the ones lying safe and dormant in neurons that have stopped firing. My body remembers all. All my starseeds, all my births. All my mothering moments.
The journey to being and feeling whole is not linear. It takes us in swirls, winds us in knots, spins us in circles for as long as it takes for the truth to sink in or be revealed. Years have passed, and I am still unpacking so much. Our stories are our wealth. That is a central scripture in the Garden. Writing and dancing are my core ways of excavating the stories, of accessing my wealth.
The more I write, the more I sit with the memories, the more scenes come to me. Each one craving a few lines of deliverance on the page. I am coming, I am coming, I tell my stories. They have waited for me long enough. I am ready, I declare, it is time.
Dancing with the sunflowers in the sun on a layover in Singapore, en route to Bali, many moons ago.