Birthdays

A guest post written by my mother--professional storyteller, empath and one of the greatest letter-writers of all time. Written on June 1, 2017--the day before her 67th birthday.

Dear Megan.

   A slight change in the word " birthday" to "birthingday" is playing my mind this morning sort of like a game of pool.

That first hit when the triangle of billiard balls go every which way. A scattering with some dropping right into a corner.

   I have always felt the birthing day of each of you three as the date arrives. This time, I am seeing/feeling you at this time four years ago and, another ball, my mother in hospital being told she had a tape worm when I was born.

   I wonder if you are remembering itching all over and not being able to find any position for very long that was okay by you? I wonder if you remember those two babies on the floor in the bathroom while you took a shower?

  Then there is my mother waiting for you to be born, for Martha to be born, while she was 3000 miles away. How in the hell did she do that? She was here for Ira's birth and left the memory for you and Martha of the nutmeg on toast day.

   I recall a few things from that time. She and I walked together on the path of the Great Highway and she was panting to keep up. I was huge. Off your father and I went to hospital leaving her here in the dark of night only to return in the morning from false labor. At that time Irina (our upstairs neighbor's daughter) had already been born and was still in the NICU. Tom and my mother talked through the kitchen window through those waiting days for Ira. He was due July 21.

   Aunt Bobby was still alive and my mother told me after all was accomplished that Ira's birthing day was the most frightening of her WHOLE LIFE. She called her sister for support. That still stuns me. And then she flew to DC. How did she do that?  What her heart bore for this distant mothering?  Maybe it was always acceptance, except for that line above about "most frightening". Me too. I get it. 

  Like me, leaving you in Martinez with Lily and Cyrus with this mixture of confidence in you and Neil and a deep desire to make it easier. Always that.

 When I had my first adult storytelling performance at Sunset, maybe 1986 or 87, a woman in the audience said. "Mental health is knowing what story you are in."  That made me laugh at the time, but as I write with memory of being born, of birthing, and of waiting for a birthing, I wonder if reality is sometimes actually impossible to absorb. Time and distance bring up emotions that were too much at the time. Just doing it. Just getting through was all that could be managed.  I don't know.

  

I look at Cyrus and Lily for who they are now, but sometimes, due to a photo on FB or my computer I look again at the beginning days. And that is what I am in now. You pregnant and huge and so uncomfortable. Before we met them. 

I get it when people constantly call you a hero. How exhausting that must be to hear. I get that too. But I don't know the words for the scope of what has happened in you, for you, to you, in only four years. Nor, actually, for my life as witness and mother and grandmother. Which, I suppose, may be why I feel so much in my body on the eve of my birthday and nearly the eve of your first birthing day.

    

Lots of silence in my house these last few days. Me deep inside myself with all of these billiard balls shooting around the pool table of my mind and heart. Can that be a metaphor for loving my mother, my first born daughter and my grandchildren and how so many of these connections are felt at the same time?

 

And last. You and my mother share birthing twins. I actually never ever felt that truth until today.

I love you.  I am so grateful for the gift of life and the courage it takes to give birth.

    
Mama

Olive Hackett-Shaughnessy, Storyteller
http://www.olivestoryteller.com/