i began talking about child number three when i was pregnant with child number two. this was a pretty bold move for someone who spent nearly four years under the impression that she might not be able to have children at all. but two in vitro attempts led to two successful pregnancies, and for the first time i allowed myself to envision myself with a house full of children.

but the second pregnancy was a tropical storm of emotions. for almost six months we reacted to quad-screen test results by preparing ourselves to welcome a special-needs child. we searched (unsuccessfully) at the offices of specialists and in the many alcoves of the internet for definitive predictions regarding our little bird’s number of chromosomes. if we could have checked out for a while, filled our car with plenty of gas and taken an evacuation route to sunnier pastures, we would have.

but this pregnancy was not like that. it was the constant, embodied awareness of darkness and light, fear and joy, reluctance and exuberance. there was no way out but through.

it’s funny how the female memory works. i can recall and describe the experience of my second pregnancy, but i am no longer capable of conjuring up and experiencing its particular level of agony. likewise, the pain of childbirth and the sleeplessness of the newborn phase are wrapped up and obscured in my head by a spectacular sense of wonder and awe.

saved from the monkey's first haircut

apparently, the male memory does not work this way. when the subject of child number three comes up, my husband, who has become the official keeper of the more base realities of pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn parenting, reminds me of the tropical storm we just barely survived in 2009. “why,” he pleads, “why and HOW could we ever survive that again?”

nevertheless, i have baby lust. ayelet waldmen reminds me that i am not alone:

“other women in the park are having these same internal debates, i think. when a newborn shows up, there’s a pause, a hiccup in the general hubbub. we all stare, misty-eyed. we coo; we ooh. and then someone’s kid whacks someone else’s on the head with a shovel, or a toddler gets stuck on the top of the slide and gives a wrenching shriek, and we all briskly shake off that gentle longing” (bad mother, 182). 

maybe baby lust is merely the biological pull that ensures that the human species will persist. it doesn’t feel like this though. it feels more like standing at the edge of the creative center of the universe. staying outside of it takes almost as much of an emotional toll as bravely venturing in.

as a minister and a child of a dynamic presbyterian church, i have been a part of my fair share of foot washings. in fact, very few maundy thursdays or youth retreats have passed without the uneasy descent into vulnerability that occurs when one clumsily liberates the feet from their hiding places of leather, canvas, buckles, and laces, and offers them, in all of their clammy smelliness, to a fellow community member possessed of a rag and water bowl.

it’s too much raw humanity, yet we do it anyway. except for those times when, in the interest of time and the preservation of dignity, we wash hands instead. i have always chuckled at this modification of ritual and this attempt to clean up something that is intentionally messy. until i encountered these:

until i had boys, i did not know it was possible for the putrid smell of a post-game NFL locker room to be contained so neatly in a children’s size nine keen sandal. and i never dreamed that the still-sweet-smelling curly head of an 18-month-old could be part of the same body held upright by tar-bottomed peds. i wash two sets of powerfully smelly feet (almost) every night now. and i am here to tell you: it is not an exercise for the faint of heart.

the level of fith and sacremental beauty present during my kids’ bathtimes far outweighs anything i have ever experienced in all of my 33 years of church membership and six years of ordained ministry.  some rituals happen in gothic stone churches, and others happen in standard issue tubs. but both are grand entrances into deep spiritual intimacy — chances to make and mark meaning as we put one foot in front of the other.

my husband and i are avid fans of the bravo show top chef, for its emulsion of culinary inspiration, thrilling competition, world famous guest chef appearances, and reality tv drama. but when my husband asked me to order him an “i heart padma” t-shirt from the internet, i knew that there was something (or shall i say someONE) else drawing andy to the show:  the beloved host and judge, padma lakshmi.

i thought about being angry about this, but who can blame a man for recognizing beauty when he sees it?

since we were out of town for the show’s season seven premier, we settled in last night to “meet” this year’s competing chefs. but i had a difficult time concentrating on the show’s content because i was so thrilled to meet someone else: post-partum padma.

after years of struggling with endometriosis followed by a miraculous and much-celebrated ten months of pregnancy, padma was back on the show just three months after the birth of her daughter with an extra 25 pounds to show for it.

though she initially felt pressure to return to her lean pre-pregnancy size before the show’s taping, she allowed a healthier voice to take over. “women are beautiful in all shapes and sizes,” she explained, “and I wanted to show women that you can dress well, that you can still feel sexy, that you can still feel confident, and it was OK if my boobs were big because I was feeding another human being.”

so taken was i by padma’s courage to refrain from hiding her curves in tent-like layers of post-partum flowiness, that i noticed something else about her that had never registered with me before. on her upper arm, padma has a red seven-inch scar that she makes no effort to hide.

padma admits that she was once very self-conscious about this mark left by a terrible car accident when she was 14. but now she says, “i love my scar. it is so much a part of me. i’m not sure i would remove it even if a doctor could wave a magic wand and delete it from my arm.”

our bodies are markers of what we’ve been through. scars, wrinkles, and gray hairs are well-earned. we expand to hold new life and contract as we nurse those we love with all that we have. we are walking artifacts of tragedy and victory, and every minor or monumental thing that has ever happened to us. why shouldn’t we bear these things, as imperfect as they may seem, to one another? they’re the very things we have in common as human beings.

bravo for padma for proudly embodying her experiences of both darkness and light. i’m thinking about ordering myself an “i heart padma” shirt now. what do you think?

[the quotations in this post are from vogue  and babycenter.]

eight years ago, and after much contemplation, i slipped away from the house on a saturday and went alone to a nearby tattoo parlor to get my nosed pierced. my reasoning was informed, in part, by my own self-perception and my assumptions about how others perceived me, even as i knew that my accuracy on both accounts was probably questionable. but i was in the process of entering the ministry, a vocation that includes hazards such as inevitable affiliation with the church, an institution that simultaneously surprises me with goodness and makes me want to rip my hair out. in the deep south, surrounded by bible thumpers and those still reeling from subjection to this thumping, i was afraid to let my label as a minister define me. i wanted for people to look at my face — my nose, specifically — and think, “she’s not your ordinary minister.” i can’t say that the nosering has rescued me from eight years of stereotypes, as planned. what i know for sure is that i just like it.

the reaction to my new facial addition varied. my in-laws called me dennis rodman, which in my opinion, was hilarious! a friend cautiously asked me if i would still be wearing it once i became a mother. i answered her with an enthusiastic yes. the prospect of being a mom with a nose ring thrilled me almost as much as being a minister with a nosering.

but little did i know then that one day (in december of ’09, to be exact), my youngest child would close in on my face for a gummy-mouthed kiss and EAT my nosering. when my friend asked me if i would be a “nosering mama,” i did not forsee that such a designation would lead to utterances such as,

“hello… laurelwood pediatrics… we’ve got a bit of a problem here. you see, the bird has consumed a piece of facial jewelry.”

but eight years into this commitment, i pressed on. i never again saw that particular custom-made nosering, despite my best archaeological efforts. i resigned myself to wearing the cheap mall boutique noserings that lose their “stones” every two weeks. and then, as luck would have it, my friend and yoga teacher, margot, heard the “bird ate my nosering” story at a party and offered me her retired piece of bling — a beautiful rose gold beveled stud, custom made by the same jeweler who made my old one.

she gave it to me last night, and the new ring fits tightly, so as not to be gobbled up in fits of toddler affection.

the moral of the story is this: if you’re going to be a “nosering mama,” you’re going to have to babyproof your face.

a couple of years ago, the pediatrician recommended that our little monkey have the ever-popular eustachian tubes surgery to prevent frequent ear-infections. as a last resort, we followed our acupuncturist’s advice (in consultation with our doctor), and we took the monkey off of milk. we gave him tiny flavored doses of omega three fatty acids instead, and miraculously, the infections abated.

meanwhile, countless friends took their kids in for ear surgery. we were smug.

but in the six months since the bird reached ear-infection age (which, for us, is just under a year old), both kids have had an estimated EIGHT DAYS without ear infections. i have already bemoaned the fact that we are frequent flyers at our doctor’s office, so i’ll spare you the details in this post. needless to say, we were a bit less smug when it became clear that both boys needed tube surgery.

yesterday was the big day. i use the word “day” here loosely, since we had to be at the surgery center (thirty minutes away) before the ever-loving sun came up. the bird scored a couple of eustachian tubes. the monkey did too, in exchange for his adenoids.

MANY friends assured us that this surgery is not a big deal. such was true for the bird, who did not have his adenoids removed. but the adenoid removal involved a morphine IV, an hour-long recovery room cryfest, and the fact that something located here…

…was removed by way of the nose (how is that even possible?). to me, this constitutes a big deal.

but by the end of the day, the bird was beaming with a new vibrancy since he can now actually hear what we’re saying! the monkey woke up from his afternoon nap still looking pale, but he then proceeded to eat a good supper and jump around with his usual vigor.

now, when i am sharing our tubes/adenoids experience with other moms, i will say that the bad parts are over quickly. also, the resiliency of children is truly worthy of awe. in fact, i’d even say that it too is a big deal!

i am a mother and a minister, and it struck me yesterday that these are two vocations in which one is often expected to be superhuman. and by “superhuman,” i mean not human at all; above being human; perfect. an interesting facet of this expectation of superhuman-ness is that in both cases, it includes a sort of disembodied existance. the body will get you every time, with its animal ways and love of gravity! my world is marked by clerical robes and nursing covers, both of which i am usually happy to hide behind out of fear that my body might be objectified or labeled as shameful and inappropriate.

meanwhile, young mothers in every profession are experiencing their bodies as the main event. it is difficult to ignore the body when it expands to carry another life, acts as a one-woman-catering-service for a little one, and contracts (usually in all the wrong areas) before it’s time to start the cycle again. perhaps this is why i love the kind of honesty about the body found in ayelet waldman’s bad mother:

“how well i remember [my] rack! those perky breasts that hovered just below my chin. those pert nipples. that swelling cleavage. after four children and a full seventy-two months of breast-feeding, the last six of which were spent with my nipples clamped in the death vise of a breast pump, it is only by dint of foundation garments designed by teams of MIT professors who otherwise spend their days drawing up plans for the world’s longest suspension bridges that my breasts achieve a shape even approximating round. when i undo the clasps, buckles, straps, and hoists of these miraculous feats of engineering, my boobs tumble to the ground like boulders falling off a cliff. i could polish my shoes with my nipples” (28). 

it is my job, as a minister, to talk about miracles. turning water into wine, walking on water, and raising people from the dead are common topics of conversation for me. so why, for the love of god, should i refrain from talking about the miracle-working powers of a good bra?

on the list of things that have transformed my life are things like martin buber’s i and thou, viktor frankl’s man’s search for meaning, marcus borg’s concept of jesus, and now this:

this is the SPANX bra-llelujah full-coverage, front-closureunderwire bra. yes, it is expensive, but is it really possible to put a price on comfort and this carefully-engineered, non-surgical restoration of one’s pre-kid shape?

friends, hear the good news! we do not have to super-human. we simply have to invest in super-human undergarments.

brallelujah!

[the source for this post can be found on the bibligraphy page located on the sidebar to your right.]