Urgent Mothering

I don’t have kids. I have always known I wouldn’t have any. I knew having kids was something that never interested me in the least, and also that I would try and prevent the event of my pregnancy by all possible means for as long as I was in a position of that danger.

I have never cared much about children. I don’t care if they are cute or heart-melting or smell incredible. I have tried sniffing a newborn’s head. I got nothing.

For me, it’s every man for himself. Always has been. I have given the walking papers to every man who has wanted me to mother them, every one of them. Can’t look after yourself? Man, you need to leave.

The only exception to the rule is the animal kingdom, and even with those guys, I categorically oppose the usage of the verb mother. Markus likes to call Hanks Obi’s dad, and I guess he kind of is – maybe the term and using it comes more easily to Markus because he is a father himself and he has that bond in blood to someone.

Still, I never use the term mother when we have Obi visiting us. Never. The idea of me being tender and loving towards a dog as sublimation or some longing or lament for not having children of my own is utter bullshit, it is crap in the same caliber as calling Rachel Cusk a dimestore novelist.

Obi is my friend. I love him, his energy and his smile, and the way he is always up for anything. I love his playfulness and his gusto for life. I love how he needs to have eyes on me all the time, even when he is being petted by someone else he loves. I talk to him, I listen and try to hear what he is saying. And he of course is in love with me. He always, always, wants to have sex with me, and the older he gets, the cheekier he gets. Markus laughs at our constant attack-and-defense choreography, and tells me him and Obi, they are both the same, always going for that new angle in hopes that maybe this time they’d get lucky.

I think that’s funny.

 

But here’s the thing. With Obi, I only have him for a few days at a time or a week at most, and then I take him back to his real family. I never tire of him of his antics or taking care of him. It is a treat, a holiday from my real life, and afterwards I’m always beaten, dead-tired, and happy.

But Markus, I can’t take him back no matter how much he pisses me off. A couple of times, when things have been hard, I have thought that maybe what we should have done was to have consummated our crazy passion in secret, have an affair and when that was done go our separate ways.

But we fell in love. In fact, we fell so hard there was no way a secret anything could have been possible. We wanted to shout our love from the rooftops. We were drowning in dangerous waters, for love really is a form of psychosis, and, paraphrasing the incomparable Vincent Gardenia in Moonstruck, I don’t know if we were being naïve or stupid or what, going about it the way we did.

And, the way they do, consequences ensued. Our love broke up a marriage and an engagement. For years I was extremely pissed off because the marriage part became the whole story and my poor beautiful vintage wedding dress just hanging in the back of my extensive wardrobe didn’t even merit being a footnote in how people talked about us.

I became the villain of the story, Markus the innocent victim to my decadent, Epicurean seductress. Markus was either oblivious to how some people reacted to me, or he was so wrapped up in his own views he didn’t, for the longest time, think it was that big a deal.

I had a complete mental breakdown a year into our relationship. See, consequences are a tricky business. While I brazed myself for whatever may come, the amount of hatred, contempt, and horrible opinions and stone-throwing proved too much for me. I didn’t sleep for an entire year. That, too, had some serious consequences that live on to this day.

Of course, living in the shadow of Markus’ cancer now I can’t exactly say that my condition back then was life threatening, apart from being suicidal for the first and only time in my entire life. But it was the most seriously ill I have ever been. My bedside table was a parade of pill bottles. I lost a lot of weight then gained it all back with a bonus when I started on the sleeping pill. I was violent. I hurt myself, I would throw myself on the floor and bang my head against the floorboards, pull my hair in a fit of the most terrible furies – I know, what hair, right? I would scratch and hit myself in the head or fight so hard against Markus, terrified and shaken to the bone by my insanity and with no real understanding either what was happening exactly, or if this was just the way I was and not extraordinarily out of the ordinary, trying to hold me still I would sport bruises all over my body for weeks.

And almost no one knew. I was so paranoid, clinically depressed, and plain tired I was on sick leave for almost two months from work. When I tried to tell people I didn’t sleep at all and I was feeling alone and awful, all I got as response was but you don’t look it at all.

 

Our horrible first years being thankfully behind us, we have discussed sometimes our terrible love and how hard it has been for the both of us. But also, Markus has said in a few reflective moments – he is more a go-getter than your pondering-our-past kind of guy – that in the end, getting to know me and learning, very slowly, to navigate in the tempests and hangups of my character he has gotten immeasurable and golden lessons and tools as to how to relate and respond to his kid. I did always sense with them that we were the same, and have always tried to keep out of each other’s way. Furthermore, says he, learning to be a single dad has improved his relationship to his kids, and he has felt at times that they have gained more positive things and learned to appreciate each other more precisely because he isn’t constantly there, yelling at them, trying to boss them around and telling them what to do, lecturing about this or that topic, and the relationship has perhaps, in the end, improved by Markus setting an example to go for what one believes is right for them, make a life that feels right no matter how left of center, and be happy, no matter how much others may condemn the choices at first.

 

For me, it was very different. During our early years together I, for the longest time, became the invisible woman. I had never been with anyone so much older than me or as established, someone who had achieved so many things in a field that both interested and mesmerized me, and learning the ropes was painful and excruciatingly slow. We both are used to getting our way and being the leader, we both like attention and are used to being the center of it, but at the end of the day, he is the high-profile newspaperman, and I am nothing special.

This is not to say I am fishing here, or have some unrealistically poor self-image or any issues with self-worth.

I know exactly what I am worth, what my love is worth. Being with me is worth the fighting and the trouble. I am proud, I live my life exactly the way I choose, I hold onto my principles and give my attention not lightly but when I do, it’s full steam ahead. When I like someone, I have no problem telling them and telling them often how important and lovely they are and how much they mean to me. Anyone who comes in contact with me learns this.

But what I said is still true. Becoming Markus’ girl, I, in the eyes of great many, ceased to exist as an independent entity entirely, and a lot of people seemed to begin to relate to me always in relation to him.

I hated it. I still hate it. I hate it with fiery passion. To this day I don’t always know if people are being nice to me only to get to pitch something to Markus, or if they think it’s required somehow. At the height of this feeling of isolation and annihilation almost I kept running around as if in panic, practically begging to be seen, begging to be witnessed as myself. Of course, that kind of urgency and desperation is almost always viewed as being weak, and being repeatedly denied any semblance of understanding and sympathy left me feeling defeated, out of breath, and at times pitifully vengeful.

Some people thought I wasn’t good enough for him. That it was embarrassing that I was so much younger yep I am eight years younger than him. That he had made a terrible and embarrassing mistake. That he was letting himself be derailed over some beautiful bimbo. I heard people forecast that I would immediately want to get pregnant and that would be the end of Markus’ life as he knew it.

I guess I get people not wanting to get to know me. Given our age difference I guess I get the pregnancy innuendo and perhaps even the bimbo part. But really, eight years is not so much, is it? But I guess that, too, became irrelevant; eight, twenty, what difference did it make?

But after a lot of years of always the same brushoff or malevolent interrogations I am finally in a place where I can tell everyone to go to hell.

I don’t care anymore.

Thank god for the next generation and their lack of judgment.

 

Taking care of another is hard. It doesn’t come naturally, or easily, to me. I have moments when I want to just up and go like Meryl Streep plans to do the entirety of Marvin’s Room, not that anything else about it fits here.

But there are no hideaways, no breaks from caregiving. One just resumes after a night’s sleep, if one gets any. It never stops. It keeps coming. Housework. Checking to see what needs doing, if he’s okay if he slept if he had to change once, or seven times, during the night because his body is trying its damnedest to best the invader inside, and the fever usually breaks during the early hours of the morning. If there is laundry, if the cupboard needs filling.

I have had a few offers to help. I have taken up on some.

But really, there is no one else, there’s just me. And while I entertain those thoughts of hiding under the bed until he’s better I know this is my place to be and no one else’s. It is mine, and it is the job that I signed up for, and I will do this.

If nothing else succeeded before in tying the knot to another person, this finally did. I’m forever your girl now. And when you get better, we have always had shared this experience, and it will be ours.

 

This is hard. I have no idea what it is like for Markus. I think the word devastating doesn’t even begin to cover it. I cry, then he cries. I smile and wipe away my tears. I listen to his rants about the war, or his support for the nurses’ union strike, or endless descriptive stories concerning his pocketknives. I hold his head. I stroke his beard. I put my hand on his chest and chant my wordless chant. We watch TV. We go for short walks. I hold him by the belt when he needs to venture dangerously close to the water photographing the waves, or the ancient lumber rail, or the freight train. We laugh, we joke, we have our terrible fights and tell each other to fuck off. But I know I can’t fuck off anymore.

I won’t fuck off. I’ll never fuck off again. I will stay and do the unspeakable: take care of him.

 

 

 

With a little help from Lucinda Williams and her incredible double album Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, 2014.