The Story I Tell
By Kate Bailey
Photo Courtesy of Kate Bailey
I have this terrible anxiety that finds me every time I try to write these pieces. It’s suddenly as if I’ve lost my voice. As if, out of nowhere, every word feels flawed and deserves the tap-tap-tap of my backspace button. Nothing feels big enough. Revolutionary enough. Earth-shattering enough. It all feels so small. My world – one of work and mothering and very little of anything else – feels, well, dull. How can I inspire others? What story do I have to tell?
I just want to tell you how every time I see a pregnant woman, I yearn a little bit for that time in my life. I can feel the tug of my skin on my lower belly, stretched tight like a cocoon. I can still feel exactly what it was like when my babies would reach and stretch around on the inside. The sharp of an elbow, the tickle of a finger. The special kind of exhaustion that followed at the end of each day, the way gravity seemed to pull my belly lower and lower until I finally rested it on the pillow I stuffed between my legs and held between my chest. Snuggling with my baby before she was even here. I’m reminded of that every time she naps next to me now so comfortably, like my belly is where she’s always been meant to be. And late in the night, I remember what it felt like to walk the halls of the hospital, slow, intentional steps, stopping every minute to hold on tight to my husband, contractions strong, baby begging to come join us. How the doctors said, “Keep walking!” and we took the job seriously. How I never got the medicine fast enough, despite every effort to minimize the pain, never was able to. Just me and her and daddy, everyone else a blur, a mere object in space, a voice in the distance. No one real but us. I can hear his whisper in my ear, “You are so strong. You are doing it! I’m so proud of you.” His tickling breath. I hear my own screams, curses, and “Thank Gods” the moment she arrived. But is that enough?
Or how when I held my eighteen-month-old daughter last night, and her baby body suddenly turned into a toddler’s in that very moment. I swear it did! The enchantment that is babyhood. She tucked her arms between her tummy and mine. I consciously told myself, “Slow down your heartbeat; slow down your breath; she will follow.” I felt her heart thump against my own. Her breath started to match mine. Asleep. And in that moment, I let a few tears fall and imagined that one day she’ll be 23 and won’t fall asleep on me anymore. She needs me, wants me so much right now. That’s exhausting, isn’t it? But it won’t stay this way. I imagined all the things I’ll want to tell her when she’s grown. How much I love her, how I’d do anything for her, how I can’t imagine my life without her. How perfect she is. I had an entire conversation in my head with who I imagine she’ll be, all-the-while painfully aware that I have no idea who that is yet. I can’t even picture what she’ll look like.
Or how my three-year-old just looks at me out of the clear blue and says, “I love you, Mama” while she’s watching a movie or playing with blocks or eating her dinner. As if it’s possible that another human being can truly love you for just existing, even when you aren’t doing something for them. She runs to me and holds me, says “Mama! Mama! Mama!” with a light giggle every time I pick her up from daycare. “Let me tell you what I had for lunch today!” and every other moment of the day – when her classmate pushed her down, or when she almost had an accident but she made it to the potty, or how brave she was when she went down the big slide today. She was a baby, and now she’s not. We thought we would have every say over the person she becomes – we really thought that’s how parenting worked – but now, she’s just her own little person with specks of me and specks of her father and I love her so much more than I ever knew I could because of that.
And that’s the thing with motherhood. We all walk around with our mouths closed and our eyes shut because we don’t realize that we’re experiencing the magic of Life itself. Sometimes everything seems so painfully mundane – the day in and day out of routine and monotony – that everyone else is living a life more exciting than our own. That when we are asked how our weekend was, we say, “Oh, it was good. Yeah . . . . Tell me about yours!” All the while thinking of the number of snacks we made or diapers we changed or the times we wanted to cry while we were cleaning up another spilled-something. How we forgot to shower and never put on makeup and wore the same sweatpants covered in toddler snot for two days. We think there’s nothing there – no story to tell. But women – I’m not exaggerating when I say that we are actual magical beings. We do the unbelievable. The inconceivable. We take on the strength of an army when we haul our children, surf-board style out of a store as they scream for a toy they don’t need. When we hold babies on our hips, their heads on our shoulders, while we make dinner – how our backs permanently sway forward to create a seat special for them. Our whisper, a mighty anthem. A caress of our hand calms storms.
And so the next time I wonder, “What do I know? What story could I possibly tell?” I’ll remind myself that the big stories aren’t always the ones that people need to hear. I’ll remember that inspiration is in every inch of my body, my mother’s mind, and the miracle that is and always will be, my children.
Born and raised in a small town in Georgia, KATE BAILEY is a wife and a mother of two girls, Jane and April. She works in the field of personalized learning in secondary Education. Her mission is to find the beauty in the ordinary, wonderful, and difficult moments of parenthood as a way to connect us all and validate each of our journeys.