We got our first, “Are we there yet?” in the car on Wednesday.
Mike and I both grinned at each other like kids taking their first bite of a Quarter Pounder — thrilled but also queasily aware that we shouldn’t be.
The great, grin-inducing thing about Jake’s “are we there yet?” is that it lacked even the hint of a whine. It wasn’t a poorly coded way of telling us he would rather be just about anywhere than in a car with us heading away from home for a long weekend with his extended family to celebrate his grandmother’s eightieth birthday. No, Jake meant exactly what he said — he wanted to know if we had arrived in this curious place he had been promised.
“Is that Grandma’s birthday?” he asked, pointing out the window at one of the countless tourist traps lining the main road in Cherokee. It displayed Southwestern Native American blankets even though we were in North Carolina passing through a land trust belonging to the Cherokee tribe, whose members, to my knowledge, have never resided in the Southwest, except perhaps once they retire.
“Not yet,” I said. “If you close your eyes, when you open them we’ll be there.”
Fat chance of getting him to nap, I knew. But I didn’t much mind. I was off on a mini-vacation (if anything that involves bringing your two children under the age of three qualifies as a vacation of any magnitude). My husband was characteristically cheerful at the prospect of spending time with his family. And, perhaps most importantly, I was pain-free for the first time in days.
Amazing how good not being in pain can feel when you’ve recently been reminded of the alternative.
Are We There Yet? Redefined
While Jake’s question sent one of those little “I’m a parent!” thrills through me, being a parent hadn’t been so easy lately. Or, rather, being a parent made a trying time that much more of a challenge.
It started Friday night. More accurately, it started in some hazy time between postpartum, “I have to pee all the time,” and no longer postpartum, “I have to pee all the time.” But those are the sorts of details that distract from the story and inspire in me a too-much-intimacy-induced sense of nausea.
So skip, instead, to a trying Friday evening, when Mike and I decide it would be a great idea to take the kids to EarthFare after school where we could all have a little dinner and Mike could pick up some meat to smoke for the family get-together.
Jake does not think this is such a great idea. Jake will not be dissuaded from the idea that I should be taking him to the pool, even when I tell him that the pool closes at pick-up time on Fridays. Jake is not interested in EarthFare.
This would not be such a problem, except for the fact that: a) I am carrying Lily around in the Ergo and therefore am not available for hugs every time Jake breaks down over some difficulty of being two-and-a-half years old and at EarthFare instead of the pool; and b) I have been experiencing lower back pain for a few days and it seems to be getting worse.
Nerves, I figure as I choke down my sushi without much of an appetite. Tension from trying to finish up a work project before the impending family trip. Angst from the fact that I can’t relieve Mike of primary duties parenting a little boy who is rejecting every tasty tidbit EarthFare has to offer with the exception of the freeze-dried pineapple he adores.
“I think I’ll go to bed with Lily,” I announced once we were home.
This statement alone must have alerted Mike to the fact that something was very, very wrong. I like to at least offer Jake the option of my bedtime book reading services, even though I usually have to end up declining in favor of feeding Lily.
Feed her I did, and then lay on the bed to read my Entertainment Weekly, still tender but unwilling to get under the covers and sleep just yet because, don’t you know, Lily was due for another feeding before I went to sleep and I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that she will wake me up when she gets hungry. I have problems with changing my structure sometimes.
I did, however, decide I ought to ablute and put on my jammies before really settling in for the kind of snuggly night I generally get these days only if I am willing to snuggle in front of Mama Mirabelle’s Home Movies on PBS Kids.
The only problem with my plan was that once I reached the bathroom, I found lying on the floor a far sight more comfortable than standing at the sink. In fact, truth be told, I was in too much pain to so much as brush my teeth.
I know what you’re thinking. I’ve powered through migraine headaches when I had children to take care of. Everyone knows a mom who’s hiked her brood out of the woods with a broken ankle or nursed her child through a bout of swine flu while afflicted with it herself. In other words, as I well know, a good mother puts her needs second, even when those needs hurt a lot.
Which is why I suspected something pretty big was up when I found myself curled up on the bathroom floor crying.
Perhaps, I reasoned, I ought to crawl to Jake’s room to find Mike rather than wait for him to find me here, since bedtime with Jake can last a really long time and, comfortable as the bathroom floor was compared to all the alternatives I could imagine, I didn’t much want to spend half the night there hoping Mike didn’t opt to brush his teeth in the downstairs bathroom and bypass me entirely until he woke up to an empty half of the bed in the morning.
And so, crouched over, I made the journey from bathroom to Jake’s room, where I collapsed on the floor. Luckily, Jake’s bed is on the floor as well, so I managed not to alarm him.
“Who’s coming to kiss your feet?” Mike said, mistaking my slithering for a voluntary bit of fun.
“Mommy!” Jake cried.
Normally, I would have melted at his joy, as I do every time he yells, “Mommy!” as if I’m the best thing in the world, better, even, than the pool.
“I’m not kissing him,” I breathed, aiming for that, “I’m okay but I’m not okay” quaver in my voice.
“Are you okay?” Mike asked. Bingo. Nailed it.
“I don’t think so,” I moaned. “It hurts a lot.”
“Did you take anything?” Mike asked.
Actually, I had a couple of Tylenol clutched in my hand, but hadn’t taken them because I feared they would interfere with the anesthesia I would be given for the emergency appendectomy I was pretty sure I’d be undergoing an hour hence.
So I told Mike I thought I needed to go to the ER.
It is surreal, hearing those words come out of your mouth. I mean, really, who ever says, “I’m having a medical emergency?” Certainly not mothers, who are primed to deal with emergencies, not to succumb to them.
This is probably what prompted Mike to spring into action. If I want to go to the ER I must really need it.
Which didn’t stop me from lying in Jake’s room justifying my request as Mike trotted Jake over to the neighbors whose five-year-old was, fortuitously enough, having a sleepover with the five-year-old who lives on the other side of us. Jake probably would wish me to the ER every night if it meant he could have a sleepover with his five-year-old friends.
The mothering instinct, meanwhile, would not let go of Lily. I was prepared for Mike to give her a bottle, but I somehow felt that if she needed Mommy, Mommy could be there, even during an emergency appendectomy.
Happily, being transferred to the carseat didn’t awaken her, nor did the sound of me in the front seat breathing in sharp puffs of air that reminded me of nothing so much as movie scenes in which unprepared pregnant women are rushed to the hospital in labor.
Lily opened her eyes as we stood at the check-in desk of Asheville’s quiet, calm little ER. So quiet and calm, in fact, that the first thing Mike and I both spotted was the family gathered around a very ill-looking and very contagious-looking child.
“I don’t feel comfortable having her in here,” Mike said apologetically.
“Absolutely,” I agreed, standing up straight in a rush of selfless mothering. “Take her home. I’ll be fine.” And the ridiculous thing is, I meant it, even though the pain was getting worse.
“I’ll feed her in the car,” Mike said, torn between his two girls who both needed him.
“Go,” I repeated, the very picture of a competent, not-in-pain mom who just happened to be checking into the ER.
Mom on Her Own
And that’s who I remained as I paced the four feet of hallway between the waiting area filled with chairs I was in too much pain to use and the stations where they checked vital signs.
I spent much of my time trying not to glare at the two young guys leaning against the wall joking with each other and looking very much like they weren’t having an emergency at all but were just there to make me wait even longer to have mine tended to. But, then again, I was doing my best to look the same way, as if it was somehow very, very important to convince all these strangers that I wasn’t as sick as they were.
It wasn’t too long — even though it felt like it — before they were done with the young guys who didn’t look very sick and it came time for me to have my vital signs read.
“Take a seat,” the nurse said.
“Can’t,” I said cheerily. “More comfortable standing.” By now the pain was radiating around my right side, shooting along like a neon “Eat Here” sign in the shape of an arrow pointing to one of those diners that feel much more romantic when they are in movies and you can’t actually smell the dirt.
The nurse slipped a blood pressure cuff on my arm and a thermometer under my tongue. No temperature, I noted. At least my appendix hadn’t burst yet.
“How much do you weigh?” the nurse asked.
And here, I kid you not, I got coy. “I’m not sure,” I hedged. “I just had a baby four and a half months ago.”
Was I actually angling for one of those “You don’t look like you just had a baby!” exclamations that give me far more pleasure than they should? I truly don’t think so. Yet I am still more than a little embarrassed by the whole exchange.
What I really meant was, “I’m feeling kind of heavy today and want to use the whole postpartum thing as an excuse and also I see a scale over there and I’m kind of curious to see what it says since we don’t have a scale at home, for reasons that should be readily apparent by now.”
The nurse did invite me to step on the scale. And here’s the sick thing. I took a moment in my pain at the emergency room to feel pleased at its reading. I repeat: I cared about my weight even though I was sick enough to be in the ER at midnight.
Even worse, I was aware of the absurdity of it at the time. But I was still happy.
Duly pleased with myself and still pretending the pain wasn’t that big a deal even though my very presence in the ER suggested otherwise, I moved on to the admitting nurse and once again declined the offer of a seat.
“What are you here for?” she asked.
“I’m having some abdominal pain,” I said mildly.
For a short moment I flashed on the picture of me half an hour before curled up on the bathroom floor crying. It almost made me laugh, but that would have forced me to explain that I was actually in pretty extreme pain and that would have made me look less, you know, calm and collected. It would have been messy in a way that no one likes to be in front of strangers.
“On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the most excruciating pain you’ve ever felt, how would you rate this?” she asked me pleasantly.
Deciding that I’d rather not contemplate having ever experienced a ten, I ranked this moment a seven. “But I’ve been through natural childbirth,” I added by way of what I figured was cogent explanation.
The admitting nurse nodded as if she agreed. “Where’s the pain?” she asked.
I showed her and she nodded again. “Probably a kidney stone,” she said.
Which diagnosis pretty much should have ended my night. No need for the long wait in a small examination room where I paced back and forth in my hospital gown, pink-and-orange-striped underwear, and bare feet chanting om namah shivaya to distact myself from the pain as I wondered what people who haven’t been through natural childbirth are supposed to do while passing a kidney stone and waiting to see the ER doctor. No need for the shot in the butt that was oh so much more painful than the kidney stone itself and that I truly hope never to have offered to me again lest I have to decide whether to undergo that unpleasantness for some blessed relief. No need to read the endlessly rotating screen savers on the computer terminal in the examination room (“Don’t walk to your car alone!” “The laundry can get any stains out of sheets. Don’t throw them in the trash!”) as I contemplated which was more painful, this or childbirth. (In case you’re wondering, childbirth at its most intense wins, but it goes in waves, whereas that kidney stone doesn’t let up, even as it marches its way up to an eight on the one-to-ten scale o’ pain).
I called Mike to give him the update as I awaited the results of the CT scan, truly the most pleasant part of the night. The walk there was more of a limp, as I was still recovering from my shot in the butt, but the nurses covered me with a lovely warm blanket while the computer voice told me to “Breathe in. Hold your breath. Breathe normally.” It was almost like being in a meditation class.
“Wow,” Mike said.
“So what do they do for kidney stones?” I asked. “Just wait it out?”
“I think so,” he said.
This information wasn’t quite as dispiriting as it would have been before the shot in the butt took effect, but I wasn’t too interested in going through the weekend with two small kids and one large kidney stone still doing its thing. (Two stones, in fact, the urologist who is apparently more accustomed to reading CT scans of kidneys informed me at my follow-up appointment a few days later. The thought that another stone may be waiting to torture me yet again brings back unpleasant memories of a particularly terrifying episode of Night Gallery, Rod Serling’s post-Twilight Zone show that my sister used to get me to watch when I was way too young for it. I will never, ever, ever forget (especially now) the one about the worms that eat their way through your brain, with the scenes of the afflicted character screaming and writhing in pain. Cut to him recovering, as the worm has made its way out the other ear without killing him. “There’s some bad news,” the doctor says grimly. “What’s that?” the patient asks, fear deepening the circles under his eyes. “It’s a female,” the doctor says, pausing for dramatic effect. “And females. Lay. Eggs.” The episode ends, as I recall it, with the patient screaming, screaming, screaming. In a way I would like to when I think of that second kidney stone poised to begin its descent.)
Still and all, Mike was right that we should have been impressed that I was diagnosed and out of the ER in just over four hours, in time to go to sleep in Jake’s bed to the sound of Lily crying in anger as Mike tried to give her a bottle. I could just hear her little nostrils seeking out the milky smell of me hiding across the hall.
I cried more than a little during the following morning’s pump-and-dump. And then I got down to the task of, yes, child care. Of packing for a trip away, scarfing Advil as a proplylactic against the Vicodin the ER doctor prescribed me that would have prevented any breastfeeding, and letting my children sit on my bladder for hugs and nursing because the pain it caused was far eclipsed by the joy it gave me.
And so, five days out of the ER, three Advil working their way through my system, I found myself telling Jake that the video poker casino we were passing was not, in fact, Grandma’s birthday. Because there comes a time when it’s time to stop taking care of yourself and to go back to the neverending selflessness of being a parent. Even when you’re passing a kidney stone.
Ahimsa Alert
I spend so much time writing about the concept of surrender and so much of my asana practice focusing on how to transcend discomfort — a concept with which I have little difficulty when it comes to, say, having to pee right at the moment Lily decides she needs to eat — that I often forget about ahimsa. Or, rather, forget to practice it on myself.
Ahimsa means “nonharming,” and it is to me one of the most beautiful of the yamas, or restraints. One restrains from harming others. So simple. So beautiful. So threaded throughout our lives like a bit of spiderweb, often invisible but occasionally shining in a patch of sunlight to remind us of all the ways in which it is so very easy to harm others and so very satisfying to avoid it.
Ahimsa should also be practiced on oneself. In an asana practice, for example, it defines the line between pushing our bodies to do things we didn’t know they could do — transcending discomfort — and not hurting ourselves — causing pain.
Now try to imagine practicing ahimsa in the dance between caring for our children and caring for ourselves. How on earth could I have ever spent entire nights sleeping sitting up with Jake cradled against me during his constant first-winter-in-daycare ear infections if I cared a whit for my own wellbeing? If I’m so caring of myself, why haven’t I enrolled Lily in full-time daycare so I don’t spend every minute of the brief time she’s away stressing over how much I have to get done and how little time I have to do it in? Why, for that matter, would any reasonable person even think about having kids when they know for a fact that they will give up most of the things that make them whole for an entirely different kind of wholeness?
In sum, can one truly practice ahimsa and parenting simultaneously?
The easy answer is that of course we can always practice anything. We may not be successful, but the benefits lie in the journey, in the trying, in the back and forth of figuring out how to live in bliss.
But even that much is a bit of a challenge when, for example, your child is crying in pain from tripping over the rug and landing on his finger. No matter what you were doing and no matter how important it was to you (sipping a relaxing glass of wine, sneaking a few minutes of the new season of Mad Men, sitting down on the couch for one blessed moment of a two-small-children evening at home) you must immediately drop everything and grab the Batman boo boo mitt from the freezer. It’s like our egos shut down the second our children need us. I don’t know how long this goes on, though I suspect adolescence goes a long way toward allowing us to let go of the need to nurture no matter what.
Still, it shouldn’t take a kidney stone and the concurrent inability to care for anyone but myself to get me to, well, care for myself sometimes. And, in truth, it doesn’t. That is, after all, what YogaMamaMe is really about. Reminding myself over and over again that when I did forcefully put my needs aside for the needs of my first born I suffered for it. I didn’t let myself note the suffering, of course, because, I told myself, I was only doing what a good mother does.
I know better now. I know that a good mother does things that nurture her soul, no matter how young her children are. I know that a mother with a firm grasp on her soul’s happiness is a better mother to her children. A better partner to her spouse. A better person to the world around her.
So I guess in big ways I’ve been practicing ahimsa all along. Enrolling Lily in daycare for the amount of time that feels right to me now and knowing that any day now what feels right will be more hours so that I can write and work and move my own life forward in ways that are important to me. Letting Mike take Jake out without me sometimes, whether it’s so I can take a long morning nap with Lily after spending much of the night in the hospital or just a regular evening when he takes on the heavy lifting of putting Jake to bed so I can have some quiet time nursing Lily to sleep, cleaning up the kitchen, and, if I’m lucky, trying to keep up with Hung on HBO.
Still, a big I-literally-can’t-take-care-of-anyone-but-myself-right-now scare goes a long way toward making you think long and hard about how often you really do take care of yourself.
Ahimsa Restoratives
I can’t remember the last time I offered a restorative pose, and my plans to start a page of them here seem to have vanished into the ether some time ago. Too often, my inclination is to push or pull or twist the problems out. Often, I forget that the energy that surrounds us can do wonders if we just relax and let it.
So I offer here one I liked to call the mini vacation. This one you’re going to do, aren’t you?
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