The branching future, stems
I had lives before this, stems
Of a spray of flowers: they became
One thing, held by a ribbon at the centre, a ribbon
Visible under the hand. Above the hand,
The branching future, stems
Ending in flowers. And the gripped fist—
That would be the self in the present.
—Louise Glück, Formaggio, 1999
A good friend of mine, I'll call her Inés, is struggling to have a baby. Inés and her partner have been trying for over 20 months and she recently confided in me with a slew of messages about the process and her defeat. I wondered about Inés’s future baby from time to time because she had mentioned wanting to start trying a while ago but I didn’t ask because there is nothing worse than asking a person, who has told you they want kids, what’s up with the baby making when there is no baby. Just like you never ask when a Ph.D. candidate is going to submit their dissertation. It’s insensitive to the process. When there is news, you will know, we will tell everyone. As such, I figured Inés would tell me when it was time to tell me. About 20 months ago she started a well-paying job and as a result about six months ago she was able to leverage her new income into buying an apartment with her husband, a junior scholar who has yearned for children since I first met them seven years ago. Inés has set up her life for this fucking child. She deserves a baby. Everyone who wants a baby deserves a baby.
When I was her age I, too, started aggressively thinking about having a baby; compelled to be pregnant. I would walk around Mile End, especially around Parc Laurier and stare at the effortless moms (the kind of moms that now I admire at my son’s private Montessori-inspired organic food daycare). The moms would wear loose fitting tapered jeans, white sneakers and boxy ochre Black Crane shirts over their big bellies, holding coffee cups and friends. They always spoke French. I would watch these women’s expressions—I couldn’t find anything but joy and optimism in their laugh lines or their smooth windblown hair. It didn’t matter what their lives were like, to me, they were the epitome of “cool mom”; the epitome of living a life fulfilled and aesthetically certain. They were the kinds of moms I didn’t know (I) could be until I noticed them walking around in the early summer, the time when, everyone knows, Montreal blooms and is the reason we all stay. I was desperate—recalling all the elegant pregnant women I saw to my boyfriend until he could not stand it until he left me. Being pregnant in Montreal seemed like a dream that I now had access to because I was a woman in Montreal. But I was already older, in my early 30s, my time was running out, I was Anglophone, and I didn’t live by Lapin Pressé and couldn’t afford optimism or a career that made these things possible.
My internet friend, forever optimistic Alexa Wilding, posted a photo of her friend’s new clothing boutique in the Hudson Valley, a place you wouldn’t think would need a beautifully curated clothing shop focused on local and independent designers, but that’s the risk in following through with your dreams—it can’t make total sense or else it’s a prescription. “Always finish what you start” reads Alexa’s peroration. It seems so obvious but within that context those five words were a jolt to my inability to put my personal projects first. I don’t finish what I start which is why the fantasy of living a life fulfilled and aesthetically certain is unattainable to me yet I move alongside it constantly. It’s non-committal to be alongside something. Your only mastery becomes tailgating. You live with constant yen and self-doubt.
I was terrified I would not be able to have a baby; that it wouldn’t work or would take too long. I rushed it. The only way I was ever going to be that Montreal mom was to be a mother now. But I wanted children before I knew these women existed before I ever considered the sartorial and artistic context and before I was so affected. I’m not sure who I am becoming now.
Now, I get to own motherhood. I get to say, “I have to go home to my kid” and it imbues me with a power I have never wielded before. It doesn’t matter that being a parent is ubiquitous—I get to be one, I get access to emulate the fantasy I projected on the women I saw near Parc Laurier. The power was a slow exponential ascend, like the love for my son. I had to figure out how to manage myself within it.
The first few times I went out alone after I had my son were miserable. I was deflated and no longer took up more space than was ever afforded to me because I was carrying a being inside of my body. From the outside I didn’t look like a mom, no one could tell that I hadn’t slept or that I “had to go home to my kid.” I looked ordinary. I hated the feeling. I was no longer the Montreal mom with the Upper East Side consignment maternity wear (ok, it was two outfits I wore every day) and optimism of pregnancy hormones feeding on one to three elaborate home-made baked goods a day. My body, resolutely mine, now was an empty shell, that was only useful as a milk factory and a warm blanket to sleep on. Those women I envied never looked like this because they didn’t exist as anything but an image to me. Their lives were usurped by my fantasy gaze. Are mothers image-objects? How do I exist within the motherhood fantasy?
I want to share these ruminations with Inés, but I hardly even bring my son up. I don’t want to upset her. I don’t know how to comfort Inés other than to be there for her and listen. I got pregnant on the first try, my desperation for a baby was abstracted until it happened. I cannot imagine the pain, the betrayal I would feel if my body didn’t want to do what it should (irregardless—because the motherhood fantasy is a refraction of reality— that it might be caused by her partner). Just like when watching these image-object mothers I couldn’t imagine the reality of having a child—the desperation, the vulnerability, the way I am gladly making an expansive well of space to raise this creature, and the way it’s shattered any singularity of my subjecthood. Everyone should have access to the things they desire.