You’ve been reading the wonderful essays of Kate Hopper’s Mother Words student’s all week - now how about one from the mother of Mother Words herself? Her powerfully moving essay was recently spotlighted in the New York Times Magazine’s parenting blog Motherlode. May and I were so impressed yet not surprised to see Kate featured there a few weeks ago.

Read on:

Afraid to Love Her Preemie:
by Lisa Belkin

But that was not the world we inhabited after Stella was born. Our world was filled with shiny white floors and skinny babies in incubators and on open warming beds. Our world was filled with tubes and wires and flashing lights. In that world, you can’t count on anything. You must stash your heart carefully away. You must not fall in love, just in case.

Read the full post here MOTHERLODE and the heartfelt comments of others who have had similar experiences.

Thank you to all of the Mother Words students for sharing their essays this week!
If you are interested in finding out more about Kate Hopper and the various classes she offers go to www.katehopper.com

Our fourth essay is from Kara Douglass Thom…

There are days like this.

Days that dissolve into an existence only within the confines of my house. These are the days of sick children. Despite appointments, obligations, errands, and engagements stacked high on today’s to-do list, it all ceases to exist.

All because someone barfed.

Because the vomiting children couldn’t go to preschool, I couldn’t go to yoga. That didn’t mean, however, that I could not do yoga. I figured, today, perhaps more than any other day, I needed yoga. I needed inner peace.

After untold loads of laundry and restructuring linens on beds; after cleaning stains on the carpet and wiping down the walls, I prepared for zen. I gave a bag of fruit snacks to the not yet barfing child (any mother can recognize this for the miracle it is), opened a juice box for the child in remission, and provided a blanket to the child still huddled in a ball on the couch. I popped “Little Mermaid” into the DVD player and retreated to the basement.

Shortly after Rodney Yee introduced himself, the child in remission descended into the basement to find me. Innocently, sweetly, quietly, she asked if she could do yoga with me.

“Of course, honey,” I said, my focus undeterred.

Ten minutes later I heard a small bottom thumping down the stairs. (more…)

Our third day of Mother Words essays, this time by Betsey Matas…

My children are beautiful, intelligent beasts whom I love with a scary intensity previously reserved for Chinese food and donuts. 

This winter, however, I’m not finding them particularly enjoyable. 

At two, five and a pair of ones, my kids are adorable, but much, much smarter than I am.  During these winter months, they huddle together, conspiring on how to drive mommy bonkers, often succeeding beyond their wildest imaginations.

“I know,” five year old Brooklyn, the ringleader, whispers.  “Alex and Aiden, you two learn to walk and scream ‘Daa Daaa’ all day.  Kyan, you color all over everything.  Oh, and get up all night.  I’ll just whine and nudge all day.”

“Daa Daaa!!!” the babies screech in agreement.

Kyan giggles his consent, “Ok, Sister.  Hee, hee, hee, I don’t wanna go to bed!”

This blatant touting of intelligence along with constant fighting, crying and complaining makes me want to buy a non refundable ticket to some exotic island where my new lover Guido and I will live a peaceful existence in our mess-free villa, decorated in various shades of cream and white.

I will live a life of glamour and sophistication and never again hear the incessant, “Mama, mama, mama, look at me!”  Instead, I will lounge luxuriously in bed until fatigue is but a dream. 

When it’s above freezing, I don’t need to rely on this rich fantasy life.  In warm months, I look forward to watching my brood explore and play, with glorious sun glistening off their golden locks.  We spend most days outside exploring the creek, riding bikes and swimming—not assembling in a basement playroom to stare each other down 12 hours a stretch.  Cleaning the sand off their chubby feet or chuckling at the tan lines that cover their little booties, I simply love being with them.

But in winter I wake up counting the hours until bedtime because there is nothing to do but sit.  Until this winter, I made an effort to get out of the house every day.  I was master of indoor playgrounds, free museum days, lunches out and mall trips.  As a trio, and even in the early quintet days (quintet gives it a graceful touch), we were out daily, avoiding and suppressing the special brand of crazy I knew lurked within me. 

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Our second day of Mother Words essays by Laura Blackmar Tompkins…

I look like I got in a fight. I feel like I got in a fight, too. And lost.

At least the black around my eyes is mostly just yesterday’s mascara, combined with some dark circles and puffiness from hours of wakefulness last night. Better than actual bruises. I dab makeup remover on the dark smudges, slowly beginning the process of putting myself back together. I smooth the hair that started to form dreadlocks from tossing and turning.

Good enough, at least, to leave the house in search of coffee.

For a while motherhood had cured me of insomnia, replacing it with the constant sleep deprivation of the newborn period. During those months of round-the-clock breastfeeding, my eyes closed the second my head hit the pillow. And that stage was followed by the current stage of intermittent bad dreams and minor illnesses that still keep me from taking sleep for granted.

Even now, though, insomnia is creeping back into my life, an old acquaintance I’d rather not run into again. (“Hey,” I smile thinly, trying fake politeness, “It’s you. Just in town for a few days? No? You’re moving in? I see. Huh.”)

My daughter seems to have inherited my sleeping patterns. A stressful event, a vacation, any disruption in routine usually results in multiple trips to the bathroom or “scary dreams” at night.

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Each year, we run a week of essays from Kate Hopper’s Motherwords class at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. This year, the class is going online, all the better for you folks who just can’t get out of the house because you’re watching babies. Details of upcoming classes are on Kate’s web site.

But first, here’s the first student essay by Elizabeth Verdick.

I love to hug my son to me and inhale the scent of his bristly hair and soft, pliant skin. Zach is seven but tolerates this.

When he comes in from the outdoors he carries that little-boy smell—sweat, sunshine and fresh air, with an undertone of something earthy and metallic. In the morning, while he’s buried in the warmth of his blankets, I catch the scent of the shampoo I washed his hair with the night before.

I can’t resist this strange, primal urge to bury my face into him like a mother cow nosing her calf. Perhaps it is my attempt to hold him tightly while he’s still willing to be cuddled. Or perhaps I pull him so close to me now because when he was a baby and toddler I could not.

As a baby Zach cried often, arched his back as I held him and pushed away my face with a tightly clenched fist. He learned to crawl away from me, then to walk away from me, then inevitably to run. I took this desperate need for distance personally, thinking that I only knew how to mother a girl and not a boy.

My daughter Olivia, Zach’s older sister, had clung to me as a baby. She said “Mama” early, held my hand as we walked, stroked my face and spent hours in my lap. We could have whole conversations, it seemed, while simply looking into each other’s eyes. So I thought I was a good mother—one who loved deeply, nurtured, supported, and treasured the gift of raising a child. I thought I understood something about the mother-child bond.

But with the birth of my son, the Universe gave me a wake-up call—no, a smack down. Suddenly I had a child who rejected nearly every attempt to bond. Zach ordered me around, not with words (he had none) but with screams and cries. When I didn’t understand his needs, he’d thrash his body on the floor or bump his head against a wall. I jokingly referred to him as “The Little General” but I was worried. The doctors I consulted said that boys tend to talk later than girls and advised me to “wait and see.” I waited.

And I saw a boy steadily retreating from me as time went by.
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