I used to be a teacher. Way back, when I was “passing the time until I could have a baby”. As a young, enthusiastic post-grad, I got a fellowship to Smith College, was handed my Master’s degree. I went off to teach kindergarten at a local private school. It was a beautiful way to pass the time.
How I adored tying those shoelaces, blowing noses, and getting hugs and kisses every day from those sweet little faces. I did drink in the challenge of teaching children the mysteries of decoding text and exploring unfolding monarch butterflies, but most of all, I just wanted to nurture them. I wanted to hold them and settle them and ground them in the world. I think what I really wanted to do was mother them.
And then, only a few years in, we decided, to heck with it. Let’s just have a baby. And we did. My kindergarten class watched as my belly got bigger, and bigger, and bigger. They clustered around my ultrasound photos and helped me choose names. A few days before my due date, we all gathered around a huge cake to celebrate, and I cried when I said goodbye to them.
I’m sure not a single one of them will ever forget that their kindergarten teacher’s baby died. But she did, and strange as it was, I crept back into the school the next fall. This time, the children held me. They settled me and honored me with simple phrases such as, “You must feel really sad”, and “Charlotte was really cute.” Their honesty taught me so much. They were the only people in my life who did not expect to get the “old me” back. They accepted that something was changed, and they thoughtfully explored what things were like for me. They asked questions that would have sounded shocking coming from the mouth of an adult, but they were the questions that I longed to answer. I was grateful to go to work every day.
Those little children shepherded me through that next year, and through my pregnancy with Liam, with their honesty and their love and their small, wet kisses and sticky, dirty fingers. I could never appreciate anyone more than I did those children, that year. Those children represented the truth of what my life had become. I knew they had so much to teach me.
And now I am back to teaching, in my own way. It has become one of my fiercest passions to work with the community of caregivers who will one day be faced with a frozen-faced mother who is learning that she will never take her baby home. It’s become a hunger for me to determine what tools I can possibly provide these caregivers with so that they will be able, like my students, to lovingly but thoughtfully take someone by the hand and speak honest, true words in the face of an unthinkable tragedy. Those children taught me so much. And I’m trying to pass along their legacy.
I was pleased, then, to receive an email recently in response to a small class I offered to a group of aspiring midwives.
I just wanted to write to thank you so much for sharing with us today. I feel so honored to have had the opportunity to share a space with you. You were filled with so much wisdom and honesty, I was so wholly grateful for your presence.
A few weeks ago, we had a class on Pelvic Exams. Our instructor got on the floor – whipped her legs apart and very relaxed, introduced us all to her vagina. It was astonishing – and definitely set the stage for comfortability with our own bodies following. It struck me while you were talking at one point today – that you were doing the exact same thing on an emotional level. Even more so than the pelvic exams, I truly cannot fathom the courage that takes, and I am ever so grateful to you for it. Your expression of accessibility and honesty was such an example for ourselves to be just that to ourselves, for each other, and for the women we will one day (hopefully) be caring for. Thank you so much for coming to talk with us – It was truly a ‘life-thought’ changing day, and I am so thankful to you for it.
So perhaps, then, I am figuring out how to bring myself down to the level of a five year old, who has no long skirt under which to hide her emotions. She doesn’t have the tools to try to mask the pain or the awfulness of what’s happening. If I can demonstrate this, then may be some of the truth of it will seep through to those I am teaching.
I can only hope.