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Moo. (Round women, full of promises.)
Been sort of chewing on writing this one for a while. So, on with the moderately literal omphaloskepsis.
(I ponder whether I'm writing this at the moment because I'm grouchy at being repeatedly told that people don't see any Het-Herw energy in me. Hah.)
About five years ago, I wrote a poem called "Promises". Some of the feeling of that poem was a fair bit older than that.
Promises of round women.
I don't remember how old I was when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teinedreugan and I first discussed children, for certain, but I'm pretty sure I was seventeen. We'd talk about it occasionally, snuggled up together with his arms around me, hands resting on my belly.
It's always been there; like there are some people who know from fairly early that they're not interested in having children, I'm one of the ones who've always known. It's an odd sort of wistful ache, not, as of the moment, a particularly intense one, but every so often I'll go through periods where everywhere I turn there are the promises of round women. Which can make the insides of my head very, very peculiar for a while.
Whenteinedreugan and I got married, something clicked in my head, or started to; it's a slow transitional phase, one I described (Wiccan-influenced) as transition from the white to the red. These days I feel like a slowly deepening pink. I wore a red dress at the wedding; this was the thing that I was commemorating and celebrating, the stepping over the line in the direction of motherhood.
It's been a while since then, but in that while, there are people around me who have taken further steps. And it's . . . a strange and reassuring thing, this community, seeingwiredferret's writings about both Nano and Baz, raingnosis's writings, seeing meranthi's thoughts and transitions, reading what porcinea writes. There are women around me who know these things, know what's on the other side of the boundary between the white and the red. I'm not alone, and when it's the right time for me to take those steps, there will be people there who know what it means. People who know the risks, who will understand whatever happens, because they've been there, for a whole bunch of different 'there's.
Initiation rites, perhaps. Or just the simple community of knowing women, wise women, women who begin to know the secrets and painful trials that go with the fluttering cravings that I can fold my hands over and wonder at.
I've had dreams. In some of those dreams I knew, knew what was on the other side of the curtain there. There's a weird ache in my mind from when I awoke and fell back through the curtain of these mysteries. I know these things are knowable, I remember having known, but it's not a waking knowing -- round contemplations, full of promises.
The nesting urge ebbs and flows, and sometimes it gnaws at me like time, with all the wanting coiled up and foiled, striking like Kunda at the glass wall. I want to nest, I want my family with me, I want to build my community up and teach my children among them. I want to have conversations about names in earnest, not just in play.
I know I'm not ready, but the hunger doesn't care. And the distance doesn't care, a continent between.
But there is community here, among the round women and their promises. I will learn from them -- not brave enough nor healthy enough, I think, to be among the first, but I can learn from these and learn enough that I will be ready someday.
I hope. I'm frightened, but I continue to hope.
Until then I will settle myself in caring for my children furred and scaled and possibly feathered, and sing lullabyes in my mind. (Need to write to the breeder of black-winged Jardines, I do.)
(I ponder whether I'm writing this at the moment because I'm grouchy at being repeatedly told that people don't see any Het-Herw energy in me. Hah.)
About five years ago, I wrote a poem called "Promises". Some of the feeling of that poem was a fair bit older than that.
Promises of round women.
I don't remember how old I was when
teinedreugan and I first discussed children, for certain, but I'm pretty sure I was seventeen. We'd talk about it occasionally, snuggled up together with his arms around me, hands resting on my belly.It's always been there; like there are some people who know from fairly early that they're not interested in having children, I'm one of the ones who've always known. It's an odd sort of wistful ache, not, as of the moment, a particularly intense one, but every so often I'll go through periods where everywhere I turn there are the promises of round women. Which can make the insides of my head very, very peculiar for a while.
When
teinedreugan and I got married, something clicked in my head, or started to; it's a slow transitional phase, one I described (Wiccan-influenced) as transition from the white to the red. These days I feel like a slowly deepening pink. I wore a red dress at the wedding; this was the thing that I was commemorating and celebrating, the stepping over the line in the direction of motherhood.It's been a while since then, but in that while, there are people around me who have taken further steps. And it's . . . a strange and reassuring thing, this community, seeing
wiredferret's writings about both Nano and Baz, raingnosis's writings, seeing meranthi's thoughts and transitions, reading what porcinea writes. There are women around me who know these things, know what's on the other side of the boundary between the white and the red. I'm not alone, and when it's the right time for me to take those steps, there will be people there who know what it means. People who know the risks, who will understand whatever happens, because they've been there, for a whole bunch of different 'there's.Initiation rites, perhaps. Or just the simple community of knowing women, wise women, women who begin to know the secrets and painful trials that go with the fluttering cravings that I can fold my hands over and wonder at.
I've had dreams. In some of those dreams I knew, knew what was on the other side of the curtain there. There's a weird ache in my mind from when I awoke and fell back through the curtain of these mysteries. I know these things are knowable, I remember having known, but it's not a waking knowing -- round contemplations, full of promises.
The nesting urge ebbs and flows, and sometimes it gnaws at me like time, with all the wanting coiled up and foiled, striking like Kunda at the glass wall. I want to nest, I want my family with me, I want to build my community up and teach my children among them. I want to have conversations about names in earnest, not just in play.
I know I'm not ready, but the hunger doesn't care. And the distance doesn't care, a continent between.
But there is community here, among the round women and their promises. I will learn from them -- not brave enough nor healthy enough, I think, to be among the first, but I can learn from these and learn enough that I will be ready someday.
I hope. I'm frightened, but I continue to hope.
Until then I will settle myself in caring for my children furred and scaled and possibly feathered, and sing lullabyes in my mind. (Need to write to the breeder of black-winged Jardines, I do.)
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Someday, you will have children, and so (I hope) will I. :) And then we will trade off corrupting them for each other.
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And yes. Community. Family. Good.
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*hug'n'roomiesan*
I can see you getting totally schnookered on booze. And music. And have, in fact, seen both those things.
Me, I'm mildly tipsy at the moment, which is much more pleasant than the way I was feeling earlier, but I think I'm going to bed now. And tomorrow will be another, different day. I have faith.
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Thinking of you.
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I spent several seconds trying to read this as a perfectly-spherical-cow joke before I got to the bit about Het-Herw and realized what you were talking about.
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- Brooks, muttering about whether or not ma'at is compressible....
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Well done. :-)
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I know I'm not ready, but the hunger doesn't care.
Your entry had me nearly in tears, just because I know what you mean so well.
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I'm not surprised by that, really; it's good to have confirmation of it from you and other folks, though.
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I'm not sure there is a "ready" - I have a feeling that "If you think you are ready, you are not" might be true. I know one man and one woman in seperate couples who always want children "eventually" but never "now", because they are Not Ready.
With love, for some reason,
A.
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Neither am I. I'm very certain that I'm not ready. But I don't think I could be any more ready.
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For us, it was finding a place between impatience and longing and desire to be able to manage the sordid details of money gracefully.
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Partly this was because there wasn't reliable/safe birth control, but it was also because they didn't have to do children on their own. They had their extended families and communities (yeah, even A Village) around them pitching in.
I happen to think this is the ideal case. Do the physically-hard part when you are young and can do all-nighters, when your knees don't shriek whenever you have to carry the tot up the stairs, when you can climb the trees with them if you want to. Rely on your Village for all the advice, patience, wisdom, babysitting, remote child-minding, etc.
I really don't believe that human babies could have been designed this way in a world of nukular families. (Excepting the bizarre time of the Greater Fifties, again) there is no reliably robust way for two people do do a kidpack on their own. Babies and toddlers just require to many human resources to rear.
From my observation, most of the spiritual / emotional drain people associate with having children is really the result of doing it without enough help.
Here is an interesting essay at Beliefnet:
Version with lots of frames
Version without frames
Uh, did I have a relevant point? I lost track. Sorry. Some days babble happens.
MAO
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A kinswoman of mine was bringing us all up to date on some mutual acquaintances, two women in a long-term committed relationship, who had just returned from at trip to visit family in England. While they were there, Partner A had gotten baby lust and Partner B had realized that she was ready, too. So they had agreed that they were going to get pregnant.
It was only on the plane when they were discussing sperm sources that Partner B realized that she was the one who had to get pregnant, because Partner A was not physically able. She didn't think it was fair that they couldn't flip a coin or discuss it until they were old women. (The cowboy way for lesbians, I suppose.)
I was struck by the fact that she was dismayed and surprised to find herself in the position that most women throughout the history of the universe have found themselves in.
MAO
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suzi
(this may not be the place to mention it, but I'm going to anyway. I got up the courage to ask my GYN for details about my infertility. He was astounded! He said that there is no reason to believe at this point that I won't be able to get pregnant. We won't really know until we try. He also requested names and addresses of the doctors that have been telling me this since I was 14. *happy wistful poings* )
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That's great to hear.