Cutting Up Coats: Motherhood and Sacrifice (part 1 of a 3 part essay)

I was excited to find out I was pregnant with our third child...mostly.  But about every couple of weeks there would be moments when I would panic.  Heart palpitations, sweaty pits and palms, queasy stomach--I mean real, physical panic, and I'd think to myself, "What am I doing?"

Things had just started getting easier.  Mr. Wicke and I were just now able to take a Sunday afternoon nap again.  After seven years it felt like such an indulgence.  And speaking of sleep, the children no longer woke us up on Saturday morning.  I no longer had to scrub scribbles off walls or clean urine off couches.  Things weren't getting broken as often anymore.  Mostly they had learned to keep their mitts off of my stuff.  No one had cut their own hair in years.  They could shower and bathe themselves.  They carried their own dishes to the sink and put away their own clothes.  They dressed themselves!  I mean the list of luxeries of a life with older kids just goes on and on.  Things were a getting easier, and now what had I done???  Had I honestly gone and got myself pregnant?  With a baby??  What was I doing???

This time around was much different than when we were expecting our first baby and even our second because now I wasn't naive.  I'd been to the rodeo a couple of times, so to speak, and that bull is one tough ride!  Parenthood will wring the selfishness out of you better than anything else.  So you see, I can understand why people shrink in the face of procreation.  Especially when one looks at all she would have to give up. 

Elizabeth Gilbert, I think, looks at it that way. In her book Eat, Pray, Love she tells a story about her grandmother, who, born with a cleft palate, imagined herself unmarriageble and so got an education, worked, and lived independently.  One of her personal rewards was buying a beloved fur-trimmed, wine-colored coat for $20.00.  Later, when she does marry and has her first child, a daughter, she cuts the coat up to use for the baby.  Gilbert seems to use this as an argument against motherhood.

She says, "That's the story of motherhood, in a large way. You take the thing that is most precious to you, and you cut it up and give it to somebody else who you love more than you love the thing. And we tend to idealize that, and I'm not sure we should. Because the sacrifice that it symbolizes is also huge. Her marriage and her seven children, in a life of constant struggle and deprivation — it was heavy.  And that beautiful mind, that beautiful intellect, that exquisite sense of curiosity and exploration, was gone."

I can sorta' relate to that in my pregnancy-induced, panicky state of mind.  There was some stuff I was going to have to give up.  Getting back in the classroom?  Delayed another six years, at least.  Traveling to Europe?  Gonna' have to wait.  Shoot, traveling across town was going to be a little tricky again.  Some of the things I wanted were going to have to be sacrificed.  Sometimes, when that was my focus, it did feel a little heavy.

But then a funny thing happened.  The baby was actually born.  And when they put him in my arms, I did exactly what I had done with my other two:  I wept.  That moment, connecting with a brand new living soul, is the closest I will ever come in my human existence to heaven.  In that sacred space, where love and joy, gratitude and humility, light and limitless potential entertwine, things become very clear:  None of that other stuff even matters.  It is this new understanding that allows us to do crazy-fool things like cut up coats and give up careers; not for some self-martyring notion that it is what one must do, but because those things no longer hold the value they once did.

Believe it or not, there was a time when I could not imagine my life without theater.  Acting, singing, entertaining--I loved it!  I was good at it.  To me, it felt like flying.  And a lot of my twenties was spent revolving around that world.  Then the kids came, and they became the sun and the center of my universe.  I was surprised to find that I didn't like to be away from them every night for large chunks of time.  I missed them.  It made me feel disconnected from my life.  It gave me stress.  I don't do much acting anymore.  Some people call that a waste of talent.  Some people call that giving up.  I just call it being happy.

Those kinds of choices may be hard for some people to understand because they can only be judged by experience; one sadly, that Ms. Gilbert has chosen to never have.  Just as I finished reading her interview, my son began to awake from his morning nap.  Hearing him call for me, I made my way to his room, her description of contant struggle, deprivation, and sacrifice still simmering in my brain.  As I opened the door he turned to me, eyes lighting up in joyful recognition, his chubby arms reaching out for me.  I lifted him from the crib, pressed his soft, warm cheek to mine as he put his arms around my neck, and I whispered in his ear, "You are my trip to India.  You, my darling boy, are my ride on an elephant."

If, in fact, I never do those things, I will not consider my life poorer because of it.  What is sacrifice after all?  It is to give up something valuable for something else.  That something would have to be esteemed as something even better, would it not?  Heavier? Maybe, but what of value in this life is not heavy? Perhaps the weight of our life should be a measure of its depth.  And if to love and to be loved, to feel that one really matters, is the desire of every human soul, I feel I have chosen the better part.

(More to come...)