Woke early this morning, Ben was ill, I gave him a bath and a quick essential oils massage on his back to help ease his symptoms, itchy skin, congested. While he was in the bath I asked him what he ate at the basketball game last night…”any candy?” “No, Mom, all I had were some Cheetos.” Not much better, but at least he wasn’t sugar saturated.
Allison had her last Basketball Game last night. Spring sports start next week, soccer and track, and she wants to do both. I was hoping we would have a little break, but with new practices next week, plus the regional BB tourney, it will be the most busy week of all.
Ah Life, it just gets busier and busier, no let up in site. More Complicated and more fun.
I found this old picture in an album a couple weeks ago and decided to scan it and then put it here on my blog. Allison was ten days old, and I had just experienced the realities of a cesarean section. One of those baptism by fire moments in my life. I remember feeling betrayed by all of my childbirth ideals.

Yet isn’t that life? We have some sort of a picture in our minds of how we think life should go, and then reality smacks and it is so far from the ideal that we had hoped and dreamed about, we could not possibly imagine how things could get worse, and then sometimes it does get worse, not always, but sometimes it does and we look up to heaven and wonder, “God, do you have some sort of wicked sense of humor, is this funny to you?” Or the question Ashers wife keeps asking (yes, almost finished the book…it is riveting) – “Asher, is there a plan? Tell me there is a plan” when trying to reconcile her parents and extended family being murdered during the haulocaust.
I was first introduced to the music of Les Miserables during the summer of 1987. Our music director Matt sang Bring Him Home for the cast of the summer stock I was participating in. And I cried. No, I wept. Stirrings. Again, the deeps of my being stirring. As soon as I had the cash, I bought the London Casette. Then early in our marriage I purchased the Broadway Cassette and was surprised to find out it was even better. We Americans are so conditioned to believe anything from Europe is better than that produced right here in the good ol US of A.
The early years of our marriage defined by Les Mis. Saw the musical three times with traveling casts: Detroit, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City. Singing the songs with guitar, piano, performing, performing, performing. Where is that score? Lost the music, oh well, we can get it off the internet….but never do. Last christmas Paul was asked to sing Bring him Home at the Christmas Party. Sure I can do it, sung it a hundred times. I thought he sang it wonderfully, even though I know he only rehearsed a couple times.

That music swells the memories. Good, bad, ugly…..beautiful. It’s funny putting stuff up on You Tube, some of the comments on my vids show that people expect perfection, it is all they hear on the radio, perhaps not understanding how difficult it is to nail a performance live. They don’t understand that what they hear on the radio is perhaps something that had been recorded dozens of times looking for perfection. Yet when Amatuers like hubby and I sing and share…perfection is expected and if not delivered well, tsk tsk, you are not quite good enough for me….lowly charlatan.
I’ve never claimed or pretended to be anything than what I am, an amatuer singer who loves music. I missed rehearsal last week for Colorado Rep…too busy with basketball, so I did not know they were holding auditions for Les Mis last night. We are singing a choral medley of the show, 32 pages of it. My friend Patricia called yesterday afternoon and said she was going to try for the soprano solos and did I want to come along. I told her no, I did not plan to audition, my asthma has been really bad and I just didn’t think I had the air power to sing it right. She told me I was welcome to come along with her anyway, and so I did. “perhaps you will change your mind”, she said as we ended the call.
I had not even looked at the score to see what solos were involved. And I have not sung anything from Les Mis for years. Five minutes before she showed up, I opened up the piano and plunked out the first line of I dreamed a dream, then grabbed the leash for my dog and ran outside to walk him before she showed up to take us to rehearsal. As I walked the dog, I sang full voice the first verse of I dreamed a dream….And it all came crashing back into my mind. The emotion of that song, the lost love, betrayal and depression. “when hope was high and life worth living”….”but there are dreams that cannot be”…
So often in my life I have had moments….long moments, years, weeks, days when hope was gone. When all that was being presented to me was destruction and depression. The words that came from professional lips….devastating to my heart. “you probably shouldn’t have any more children”….”you are too fat to be a part of our troop”….”you just aren’t good enough”….”No, this illnes is permanent”…..”You can’t have a vaginal birth after a C-section, you or the baby could die!!!”….and on and on and on…..
Where was MY ideal life? Under that proverbial rock, hidden from view? God, is there a plan? Is all of this mental torture really necessary?
As I walked the dog I sang Fantines words….”I dreamed a dream”
“There was a time when men were kind, when their voices were soft and their words inviting.
There was a time when love was blind and the world was a song, and the song was exciting.
There was a time.
Then it all went wrong.
I dreamed a dream in time gone by.
When hope was high and life worth living.
I dreamed that love would never die,
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.
But the tigers come at night.”
with their voices soft as thunder.
As they tear your hope apart,
as they turn your dream to shame….”
Do ALL women feels these same feelings? Do all women have their hopes crushed by one thing or another in life? Do ALL people have their dreams turned to dust while they plod along trying to find out what life is for?
I look at my life and the blessings overwhelm. Once in a while I will meet a new friend who knows nothing about our family and the message that is conveyed to me is that our family is perfect and does not have the problems and issues that other people deal with. When this belief is expressed to me I sometimes attempt to look the person in the eye and nod and accept her assessment of things, but a couple of times I have found myself busting out laughing at the irony of it all, “no, not laughing at YOU, not dismissing YOU…you just don’t know anything about it, that’s all”.
If you think you have met a perfect family, you just don’t know them well enough. This does not mean that we all have to air our dirty laundry on a realty show, so that others can see the various foibles and traumas we have experienced. But the question does come to mind, “if we are all struggling with life and the various trials and temptations that life affords, what is it all about?” Why all of this struggle? Why all of this pain? Gut wrenching, lung collapsing, fever inducing pain?
After five minutes of walking the dog, I decided to audition. As we drove to the church where rep singers rehearse, I decided to belt it instead of try to sound pretty. It is not a pretty song. It is that gut wrenching, lung collapsing, fever inducing pain song. It is a song about a woman who becomes a prostitute to save her child. It is about mother love and women love and the depths that a soul will go to try to make her life work.
So yes, I sang it ugly, I sang it powerful and raw, and figured if the director wanted it that way he would have me do it. Sure, everyone else sang it pretty, choral music is pretty and melodic, and QUIET!!! And I sang it loud. When I finished he said “well we just heard the broadway version of that”…nothing else. Somtime I’ll record a version of it and shove it up on YOU TUBE, so others can hear my rawness. Is it possible to sing a song like that without the hoplessness it contains spilling out, even when the singer trys to sing it pretty?
I don’t know. I just know how I had to sing it the way I did. Don’t really care if I get to sing it at our concerts. (Ok that’s a lie) I have not worked with this director long enough to know what he wants, and that is good because it frees me to sing how I like without caving to the pressure to attempt to sing how he would have it. The long timers in the group all sang it choral style, so perhaps that is what will win the prize of the solo. Solos are a prize, they give visibility and kudos and praise and challenge. I love to perform. My heart thrills with each second of connection with a live audience. The overwhelm of adrenaline, the crash of applause, the absolute thrill of touching someone else to the depths of their being….true emotion, true weeping…..I love every bit and piece of it.

We have some women in our world, Amanda Marcotte comes to mind just because she has been in the middle of the current blogger storm, who have used some derogatory language to describe certain aspects of mothering. The Conservative Blogs have been particularly vicious to her. Out of curiousity I went to her site to surf around and see what she really thinks, and found this entry, and several like it, that passionately spoke in favor of women’s rights of self determination. Go Here.
QUOTE:

“One woman whose name I’m not sure I can spell correctly (Laura Pemberton I think) gave one of the most moving presentations at the summit when she told her story of trying to evade a court-ordered C-section that violated her religious beliefs. (She had one C-section before under genuinely dangerous circumstances, and the “no vaginal after a C-section” rule kicked into effect.)

Hers was a horrific story of a patriarchal medical and court system that came into collusion and forced this C-section on her in a way that made it clear that after a certain point, it was a punishment against her for refusing to deliver at the hospital and trying to deliver at home.

After all, by the time the police came to the house, arrested her, strapped her down to the table at the hospital and had the court order in hand to operate, the baby was just about to come out. (She said she was dilated to 9 centimeters—I don’t know what this means, but it made the audience gasp.)

After she told her story, she was asked about her views on abortion and she got rigid, stating that she thought it was wrong, and she made it clear at another part of her presentation that she felt it was a woman’s god-given duty to have children. This woman was the religious conservative red stater that people who talk about compromise on abortion want to lure over.

And yet here she was sitting at the table with a bunch of crunchy feminists, queer activists and generally cantankerous pro-choicers (literally, she sat with our little group at lunch one day and was winking at and laughing with some of our more goofily feminist jokes)—not because we had limited our demands for women’s rights but because we expanded those demands and the expanded view of what women’s rights are was appealing to her. Talk about choice, she’s not at the table. Talk about a woman’s right to self-determination and that means something to her.

The reason that liberals are losing people is because we’re too timid about pushing forth our agenda. And this came up again and again—women who for whatever reason aren’t overly interested in this discussion of “choice” came to the pro-choice table because the people at NAPW are talking about the much larger concept of justice and the right to self-determination.”

I was thrilled to go to the source and read for myself what she wrote, because I am a conservative and spend quality time reading conservative bloggers, it would have been easy to dismiss Amanda as a feminist nut and stereotype her and yet here she is passionately articulating a view that I completely agree with, nodding my head as I’m reading, thinking “You go girl”.
And so the circle of my life widens and broadens. Heck I do the same thing when I listen to Nancy Pelosi talk about immunizations. “YOU GO GIRL!” It is always wise to go to the source and read for ourselves rather than let our minds be dictated to and massaged by other writers.
As maturity bids and I get closer to grandmother years and old age (Stop laughing, I know I just turned 39 and everyone over the age of 45 is going puleese), I find myself mellowing. The fires of movement that ruled my twenties and early thirties into childbirth activism are slowly winding down. Why? Frankly, I’m tired. I want to spend my time and energy on something else. Musical Theatre and Choral Singing satisfys something very deep in my soul and it brings much less distress into my life than birth activism. It’s not that I have lost any belief or passion for holistic birthing, it is more that with the writing of my books, the birth conference I organized in 2001, and the various things I have written on my blog, that is about all I have to offer to the cause.
I pray that my writings have helped to articulate the truth that creating a body for a child is the ultimate act of creativity. It is the fullness of womanly power. It is the most beautiful and artistic use of her female skill and intellect. If you feel that you have been betrayed by motherhood and your child is anything but the serene, peaceful, beautiful soul that you have hoped and prayed to give birth to, might I suggest approaching mothering in a different way..and would you be offended if I even throw out the idea that perhaps healthier living is the answer?

Teaching Bradley Childbirth in our home in 1992 – nursing baby Allison while I taught.
I occasionally feel a burning desire to go to my young friends, newly pregnant, wide eyed, and so hopeful…so innocent…so beautiful in their mother glow. Grasp them by the arms, shake really hard…and yell so loud, no one can miss one word of what I say, and scream…”DO NOT LET THEM CUT YOUR BODY!!!”
I know that won’t be very effective, and so I have never done it. But every once in a while, yes, I am tempted. If you saw someone about to walk over a cliff with their young children, you would yell…right?? You would scream. You might even jump at them and try to pull them away, perhaps even scratching and hurting them or the children in the process, but knowing that what you did was right and good and necessary….You would do that, right???
That is how I feel at times when I listen to the birth stories, when I listen to the young ones quoting their doctors and midwives and sharing the stories….
I’ll keep writing, sharing, praying, hoping that something I write will influence someone, even just one, one family, one birth, one baby born more gently, more peacefully….but at times I get so frustrated with the whole thing I just weep.
I remember pouring out my heart to Heaven one day. I yelled in my mind to Father in Heaven….”WHEN is it going to be fair?” “When is this montrosity of a whore going to go down in flames?
What keeps me going are the babies. The birth stories. The glow I can HEAR in the voices of my friends when they call or email to let me know another baby has been born into the hands of its father. Amanda Counter wrote me such an email when she gave birth to her fourth baby at home. It was a painful birth, and when I wrote her back to revel and tried to find the words to comfort, I just told her some life events take you to the depths as a woman and we have no guarantees that birth will be painless. When a home birth feels like a betrayal (Did it really have to hurt that bad???), it does cause the momma to look up and ask, “is THIS pain really necessary???”.
I don’t know. It just is what it is. Some births are painful, some are painless. I’ve had both. Amanda was still able to do it at home and it was a triumph for her. Perhaps the pain opens us up to the greater depths of joy motherhood has to offer. And when a woman conciously chooses to anesthetize herself from the pain of birth, perhaps she cuts herself off from the ability to even feel the joy that COULD be hers if she would trust the process of birth.
As I circle around this life, experiencing the joy of music, performance, laughter, the heights and the depths of mothering I trust that in those things I don’t understand that there is in fact a plan, a purpose, a meaning…to the pain.
I believe Salvation is the goal and exaltation is the prize.
Jenny Hatch