signs of stendhal

I have to preface my answer by saying that, as much as I had pictured being a mother, I never really pictured myself being pregnant. It’s not that carrying my own child wasn’t something I wanted to do, to the contrary; it’s just something I was unable to clearly envision. I, like many women, entertained a convincing paranoia that it wouldn’t work for me. A miracle of such enormity is already hard enough to compute; participating in any way is almost beyond the credit I could give myself, especially knowing perfectly qualified and worthy would-be parents who couldn’t get pregnant. If nature denied them, why would it be generous to me? Well it turns out, that part is random, or at least subject to an otherworldly logic I need not understand. I got lucky, so here I am.

OK, let’s get the things-that-are-just-how-I-expected out of the way, because they are kind of boring:

• Strangers invite me to take their seat on the bus.
• Friends like to touch my stomach.
• I have rare but random weepy spells, even when I don’t feel particularly emotional.
• My boobs are bigger and I’m always horny.
• I gleefully eat ice cream 1-3x a day.
• It’s harder to flirt with dudes.

Now for what surprised me: 

• How much I’ve loved this baby before it’s even technically a baby. I now understand why parents think everything their kid does is the greatest, because I was so fricking proud of my little zygote for implanting, and then of my little blastocyst for cleaving, then of the little embryo for growing organs, and now of our little fetus for kicking and squirming. Basically, for doing all the stuff it’s expected to do that looks ordinary to anyone on the outside.
  
  The experience has given me the gift of this beautiful epiphany: that I never really fathomed my mother’s love for her children. Because if her pregnancies were anything like mine, by the time each of us was born she probably loved us more than anyone else ever could. Which means her eagerness for me to have my own child wasn’t just because she wanted a cute new baby in the family, but because she was impatient for me to finally understand how much she loves me.
  
  
• Upon finding out about the pregnancy, I expected to feel joy but I also expected to feel panic, so it was quite a surprise when the panic didn’t come. Instead I felt a great relief, a marvelous freedom from all the things I didn’t truly care about and all the other lives I should want/could have — because I knew I wouldn’t have time to dwell on those thoughts anymore. I would finally have to stop bullying myself over what I hadn’t yet done or would never do, and instead put all energy into doing only what met the highest standard of Mattering To Me. That list quickly became very short and very obvious in the best of ways.
   
• But the biggest surprise is how much being pregnant has prompted me to think about death. Not in a morbid or fearful way, and not even because I’ve been reading up on birth stories and stats, which expose the subject of America’s unnecessarily high maternal mortality rate. I just find that I can’t reflect on what’s happening in my body from any perspective except one that hovers above the axel of life’s revolving door. To contemplate a beginning is to contemplate an end. To introduce a life into the world is to introduce a death into the world. That is the dual nature of nature, the twin stares of Mother Isis — all swirling simultaneously in my gut. Especially in the early weeks when a miscarriage felt as likely as anything, the birth/death outcomes seemed two ends of the same rope at which my imagination would grasp ardently, late into the nights…
  
  Before I’d told anyone except my husband about the pregnancy, I used to pace hurriedly through the streets of our neighborhood just like a girl with an urgent secret, instinctively holding my stomach and parsing through racing thoughts, one of which was, Wow. I have inside me right now the person who is going to bury me someday. When I later shared that with friends, they laughed, seeing it as comically macabre. But it wasn’t that; I actually felt comforted at the thought, and was awed by this preemptive glimpse at closure. As I wrote in my journal the night my pregnancy was confirmed, that moment of finding out instantly became “the belly button of my life,” tying the skin of my past and future existence into a defined center, giving it all unified form.
  
  And I suddenly understood how some people say that having kids makes it easier to die. That’s usually proposed as a critique, and certainly I always thought of the inevitability of death as a lame “reason” to reproduce. But now that I have another generation gestating in me, I see the relief of being survived not as a ‘reason’ but just as a fact. I do feel better about her father and me eventually dying, believing that our families have combined into a new person who might carry on our love for the world after we expire. It’s not that we were looking for a way out of death, or that we naively believe we’ll carbon copy ourselves onto another being. We just lived our lives naturally until more life grew out of it, and somehow that notion takes the edge off death’s unyielding persistence, and allays what doubt I had that the big revolving door is nothing cruel, or futile, or anything to fear. Now the door seems, just like everything in life, another way of learning to share, learning to take turns, learning to grow up.

Long before being a candidate for parenthood, I enjoyed randomly asking people: “Pregnancy: miraculous or mundane?” I’d felt it was equally both things, but now, for me, its mundanity only contributes to its miracle. I suppose that’s one of the shifts that constitutes our transformation into gushing, lovesick parents. At least, that’s my assessment halfway through the process. Ask me again next trimester!

It’s very flattering you assume I have wisdom to share on this subject, as the challenge of “keeping the spark” is as old as couplehood. Here’s my take on it:

People tend to think that as time goes on, relationships go stale — they get boring, they cease to be challenging, they fall into ruts. I would argue that this unfairly portrays romance as deteriorative, when in fact as anything goes on it tends to become stale to us. We become less and less engaged, challenged, and prone to explore new paths with it. Is that a flaw of the constant in our lives, or of our treatment of it?

OK, so relationships may be extra at risk of seeming progressively dull because they involve (at least) two attention spans that are both inclined to dwindle. It’s not because we’re shallow; it’s because our brains try to be efficient by paying less attention to what registers as “familiar.” Hence minds (and eyes) wander, looking for new stimuli. And when they find it, we feel the rush of encountering someone who seems comparatively SO vivid, SO invigorating, SO sparkling with “spark”. Rinse and repeat.

That progression is typical of long-term relationship entropy, but things don’t have to go that way.

To cut to the chase: my theory on “keeping the spark” is to keep paying attention. But I must say, I don’t ever feel like I’m making an effort to sustain passion for my partner; I make an effort to sustain my passion for daily living, and in doing so, the passion for him sustains itself. This is an exercise in general Awareness, in seeing clearly. When you see a lover clearly, you see as you did in the beginning so it’s not hard to feel as you did in the beginning. But since it goes against all mental habits, it takes a lot of practice and that practice can take many forms: meditation, conscious touch, travel, alone time, and writing all hit the REFRESH button in my particular brain so its not clogged up with what I think I’ve already learned/observed/admired. For other people, what works may vary.

Conscientiousness must be a mutual commitment, of course, because in romance we want to feel seen as much as we want to feel enchanted by what we’re seeing. The impulse isn’t vain; it is natural, and must be satisfied for a substantial connection to be made. The trick, which I’m still tinkering with, is how to allow the merger of souls without incurring the merger of selves. Souls are supposed to open up and embrace each other, to fortify into shiny, heart-shaped, soul-on-soul pig pile action. But selves are meant to spring in their own unique directions, to chase and probe various versions of existence. We can fulfill both of these yearnings, even in long-term relationships, but rarely does that happen by accident.

And as for how I/we manage problems that arise, well, the perspective above doesn’t really consider problems to be problematic, more like another flavor of stimulation. True, that’s easy enough to say; when an issue comes up it sure can feel like a crisis. But the deeper we get into our relationship, the better we are at non-defensively noticing the real triggers and dealing with them before they mushroom into drama. With trust in good intentions, we’re safe enough to “be a mirror” for the other and to examine ourselves for underlying issues and reflexive behaviors.

I won’t lie, this requires a copious dosage of honesty and thus super-human amounts of humility and faith, and I don’t always have those on hand particularly when a wound is raw. When we first resolved to practice this lifestyle there was plenty of defensiveness and meltdowns to go around, but in time we proved to each other that we could talk about our flaws and blind spots without condemnation. And that’s when everything changed. Now, because of our investment in “brutal” honesty, not only does our bond feel indestructible, it has become indispensible. I have someone who doesn’t just adore me and make me laugh, think, and moan, but who will also call me out, talk me down from my delusions, and alert me when I’m hurting others even if by accident. That is someone I want in my life, forever. That is someone worth meeting again every day as if for the first time, so you better believe every day I do my damndest to make a good first impression.

Those are some very curious correlations you’ve drawn! Any logic to them?

Me, I’m actually a registered Independent, which is annoying this time of year because pollsters buzz my apartment every day asking how I plan to vote. The answer of course is I plan to write-in the ghost of Louisa May Alcott.