Discussing motherhood in Neukölnn
two free ladies with nothing binding them to nowhere discuss the ultimate responsibility of becoming a mom
I went to visit Clara in Berlin. It had been six weeks since her mom, Esther and me waved at her from a train platform whilst she stood in the door opening, crying her movie star tears. When the train left the station her mom took a sprint that neither Es nor me could keep up with, on white trainers, 70 years old, waving a handkerchief.
Due to the fact that i had somehow (fucking mysteriously) contracted scabies, I was not sleeping over at Clara’s house. Scaby treatment included bathing in a neurotoxic cream overnight, putting all the textiles I touched in trashbags (also my laptop cover) and vacuuming my mattress, to then avoid it for a week. Technically I was no longer a mite hive and again a free lady, but it simply does not feel right to share a bed with your bestie when your skin is still all bumpy. I booked a private room somewhere where I knew my sheets would be boiled after being strapped off the bed.
On the train i finished a book with an extremely ugly cover but beautiful writing about motherhood and divorce. Two topics far from a world in which I felt sorry for myself that 1) I wasn’t having sex and 2) I still got scabies… The author of the book, Leslie Jamison, also writes about feeling sorry for herself. Like me she contracts a contagious disease (some medieval virus called covid) and has to quarantine, getting severely ill whilst having to parent her toddler for 24 hours a day in a locked down New York.
Yesterday, my favorite writer, Haley Nahman, returned from her maternity leave and wrote her first essay as a mom, about becoming a mom. She writes about their first night at home after a hospital birth, how they struggle quite a bit with having a fresh human with them, until she pulls her arm when moving her pillow, and she struggles greatly:
“Not wanting to wake Avi, who’d just fallen asleep for the first time in days, I hobbled to the living room couch to fall apart in peace. My arm was paralyzed into a chicken wing. I’d cried a lot since birth, but these were real cartoonish sobs. I’d never felt sorrier for myself in my entire life”
And then there is Jo, my high school friend, who much ahead of the rest of our group has literally birthed a child 10 days ago. During her pregnancy I wasn’t very engaged, not being her closest friend or sister and not having had aligning schedules for quite some time now. But when she sent a picture of her baby, I cried. I’ve received whatsapp messages from her with time stamps that create a first reaction of surprise, and then a second reaction of deep realization: she is in it. Like Leslie, like Haley, she is awake during the late night, the early morning, hopefully napping during the day. She writes messages that calm my concerns about her sore body, her sleep deprivation. She enjoys watching her baby grow and her partner is showing up in the best way. They are filled with happy emojis.
All this has happened and at the same time here are Clara and Robin in a Turkish bakery, recovering from a chain smoking induced headache with scrambled eggs and assorted fruits (2 green grapes, 2 purple, a slice of peach in february), stating they are growing old, since they only ordered one bottle of wine last night (after drinking two martinis, a gimlet, some shochu and a beer). A woman enters the bakery with a stroller, Clara jumps up, she has been trained to help any woman with a carrier “like in Berlin sometimes to descend a train there is a gap of half a meter. And no one helps. A pregnant lady was so surprised when I gave up my seat to her last week”.
We discuss birth stories. She tells me how she warmed up her freshly born but slightly cold godchild in a sweaty hospital bed. We discuss secret miscarriages and trying and failing, IVF, abortion. Nursery decorations and fake wooden stoves, having a child and acting like you don’t versus giving up all your own wishes for the gratification of your child’s. So much has been said, so much has been written but what sticks with me most is a part in Jamison’s book where she is eating with her daughter strapped to her chest in a carrier, crumbling upon her head, deciding to leave the crumbs there until she has at least finished her pastry.
A similar lesson was drawn from Haleys essay: you just have to be pragmatic. Not think about what would be the best way to do something, not research all of these different options trying to figure out the best one. Just see what you can do and move forward from there. She states is more beauifully, of course:
“There have been so many moments after that first night home when Avi and I have had to scrap our hand-wringing about getting things “right” in favor of an untested path forward. There’s wisdom in this shift, in momentum itself, in well-meaning missteps into new territory. This is how I became a parent. I think it’s how we grow up, too.”
And I take it to be excellent advice for two hungover ladies in a Turkish bakery in Berlin, ohne Kind ja bitte. Don’t consider all you options, just move country and try it. We have the luxury of European passports and the safety net of our dear parents. Don’t overthink, just go. A well-meaning misstep into new territory.
Clara’s in Berlin now. She performed on stage last Friday. I’ll be in Marseille in three weeks doing a trial shift. One day maybe we’ll hug each others babies. For now we just need to go.
xxx
❤️
Ja hoor.
Best wel magisch.
ly 💗