idelette

Who knew what bloody mess I was letting myself into when I pushed that first eight pound four ounces of human being into the world? She came out crying, like they’re supposed to, and she was beautiful and the whole motherhood thing was all too surreal.

I, who had changed one diaper before in my life, was now a mother. My life’s ambitions had been so different, but I had tasted lots of Adventure and was ready for this one. Or so I thought. When seed met sperm, I was just thankful that my little human responsibility didn’t arrive by courier overnight, but that I became expanded, slowly at first, over those nine months of waiting.

Then she arrived and I held her to my breast and we started figuring things out together. I began an adventure into stretching that even my expanded belly couldn’t have imagined.

That first daughter was born a pioneer, always conquering new frontiers. And like on that first day she showed up, she keeps birthing me into these new places.

She was there with me through my first few months of surrender. She pushed me into it. Whenever I wanted to do what I wanted to do, she insisted that we do what she wanted to do. She was not even a few months old and, of course, being the adult, I relented. Finally, when she was about six months old, I laid it all down. I laid down my expectations of what life was meant to look like now. I laid down my dreams, because it had become clear that our lives were now inextricably linked and it wasn’t about to change. My life no longer belonged to myself, but my responsibilities and dependencies crawled around outside of me.

I couldn’t imagine life without her anymore and I didn’t have time to do much else, so I had to change. I had to lay down pretty much every piece of certainty I had carved out about myself in the previous years. What I needed? It didn’t matter. I had to learn to function at the level of absolute necessity. She pushed me to become clear about what was really important in my life and helped me get my priorities straight. I was finally beginning to grow up.

On that day she moved through me and out of me, I had started off on a journey I had absolutely no clue about. I wasn’t a girl who had given much thought to motherhood. I just imagined it would work well with the life of a writer, because I could be at home and the kids would be at home too. So I thought we’d be ok.

As the months passed, I finally began finding my feet beyond diapers, naptimes, feedtimes and laundry. I began adjusting to my new responsible, mothering life. Then, when she was nine months old, we were getting ready to fly off to South Africa—to introduce our daughter to family and friends there—including a ten-day stopover in the south of France first.

Two days before we flew off to the vineyards of Pézenas, Beziers and eventually Stellenbosch, two days before I could taste the brie and every round of unpasteurized cheese that existed in the Languedoc-Roussillon region, I took a pregnancy test.

As the positivity surfaced and became a bold red line across the pee stick, I realized I had more expanding to do. Apparently there was more I needed to learn and still more I needed to lay down, starting with the world’s best red wines and, yes, all that cheese in France.