Homework

I had to write a two page Autobiography for my "Art of Storytelling" class. It's fitting with the theme my blog, so I'm posting it for y'all to read (I cut out a little):

My life began and ended 17 months ago when my first-born boy came tearing into the world.

During a woman’s nine months of pregnancy, her thoughts turn often to what she might consider the end of her pregnancy: childbirth. What she doesn’t realize, what I didn’t realize, is that the pangs of labor and, more specifically, the throes of delivery, are only a moment, the blink of an eye, the turning of a page, a punctuation mark, that will forever define and divide her life: who I was before, and who I am now.

If you get a group of moms together and bring up the subject of childbirth, you will uncover a treasure trove of stories. Moms long to tell their labor and delivery stories, because not only is it an incredibly intense and unique experience, but it is also the most significant one in their lives, no matter how old they are now. As they reminisce, you can sense just below the surface all the pain, joy, and pride of their experiences as well as the comparisons, judgments, and condemnations as they listen to and advise one another. Every single mother will have an incredible, unique story; some long, some short; some hysterical, some sweet; some complicated, some simple; some sad, most joyful. Just as she feels about her parenting, she will try to hide both pride and defensiveness as well as insecurity and regret about how she went about it.

Not everything has changed since my childbirth experience, but what remains the same had to be sought out, reclaimed and often reshaped. My former body had to be chased down, now with stroller in hand, and though it may look similar to the untrained eye, it is still marked by the faded but permanent scars of stretching to carry another human inside. My feminist convictions had to be laid aside for a time while I was biologically required to be the One to wake in the night with a hungry baby, but were dug up and brushed off when I declared that I was, heaven forbid, bored staying home with a toddler all day. My intelligence and my confidence in my intelligence had to be rebuilt as I left the baby at home and interacted with fellow students and colleagues again, unsure that I would still be interested in how students learn, the politics of public schooling, the nuances of poetry and themes of novels. My life’s scope and pace had to gradually re-broaden from the necessities of food and sleep to the delights of building strong relationships and working hard toward worthy goals.

Some moms are quick to reclaim their previous identities after the births of their children, but for me it was a slow, sweet process. Now I find myself with another little life stretching out my tummy, looking forward to another sudden moment of change followed by more gradual reaffirming and reshaping of who I am – a Christian, a Chicagoan, a feminist, a liberal, a wife, a teacher, and now, a mother of two.