Caring Diaries

Circling HomeWork #14

Note: I had this essay locked and loaded under the title “Other People’s Children,” and then opened my phone this weekend to see this from Glynnis MacNicol — and it’s lovely. It is a joy to care for other people’s children. It is particularly a joy when it happens in community. And also, sometimes, it is less so.

I grew up in the shadow of my mother’s childbirth stories. I was born in the recently post-Soviet Poland of the early 1990s. The hospital was cold, dirty, and institutional. Partners and family weren’t allowed in the room. My mother gave birth surrounded by strangers. My father couldn’t touch me for days. In the shared bathroom down the hall, cigarette butts floated in the toilet. 

Maybe that is why, whenever I think about pregnancy and childbirth, I have a hard time imagining it as anything but lonely. Having a body already feels so alien, so cumbersome, so ridden with grief. And we put ourselves through this claustrophobic metamorphosis as if it’s just fine. It’s fine. 

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