My father has a saying (he has lots of sayings) that there are three things that you cannot understand unless you experience them firsthand. One is war. The second is sex. And the third is depression. Married just after boot camp before heading to Vietnam, he got his first two experiences early on in life, but it was many years before he felt the pains of depression. It was then he could suddenly understand why others just couldn’t “get over it”.

After our conference in DC last weekend, we stopped by my friend Becca’s house to see her and her beautiful new baby girl. Her baby was born in mid-April and she was due to go back to work on July 1. As we chatted on the floor to the sound of baby coos, she lamented her concerns about leaving her little butternut.

And as I sat there looking at her baby, I desperately tried to remember what my life was like when Ian was that small. I have a hard time remembering what it was like when we had to cradle his head as we held him or when he couldn’t just wake up and crawl all over us in the bed. There was a time when he weighed less than 20 pounds and still fit in the car seat bucket but that just seems like a lifetime ago.

I remember when we first brought Ian home and I was writing about various issues with nursing or sleeping or diapers or other truisms to newborn parenthood. Several other mothers would suggest things that seemed crazy to me. I now understand that they were just like I am now, trying to offer ideas but losing track of what we’d tried when, mostly because all those first months are a big blur. One thing no one forgot, though, was the feeling of having to leave their baby for the first time.

So I’d like to amend Daddy’s saying and add a fourth thing. I’d say that you can’t truly understand the storm of emotions that comes with being a mother of a newborn unless you’ve lived in that body. Even sitting in Becca’s living room, I could only imagine the heartache she was feeling in anticipation of going back to work and I’d lived it not six months ago. That period was hard on Rich and I see now how hard it must have been. Because intellectually he knew I was having a hard time but there’s no way he could really get how physically painful it was for me. And there’s little anyone can do to help. We all just have to weather through the phase and make the best of it.

When I got my prescription for Zoloft, the doctor told me I didn’t have postpartum depression. She said I had “situational adjustment with mixed emotions”. That diagnosis is the understatement of the year. I think I’ll be in a “situational adjustment” for years to come, but at least now I have a better grasp on my emotions.

So I know what you’re going through, Becca, and my heart aches for you just like yours does every day at work. Try not to cry too much, but don’t worry if you do. Spend every free minute you have holding that beautiful baby girl of yours, smelling her skin and putting your heartbeat next to hers. And soon hopefully those will be the only memories that will stick with you from this transition.

I went to my parents’ house with Ian yesterday and Dad happened to be home as well. He’s been working on rental property a lot lately and getting home very late.

But last night he was in a particularly good mood. He picked up Ian and they were swinging around and making motor boat noises and tickling and having a grand time. It was fun to watch them because when Ian was a newborn Daddy didn’t interact with him much or want to hold him. And when he did he just fretted about how fragile newborns are.

After a bit, Dad said, “We should take him to the hospital nursery to show all the new fathers how good it’s going to be in just a few months. Cause this is pretty great.”

Seeing my father smile after so many months of fretting and depression was pretty great too.

“My parents are awesome. They just drive me crazy, you know?”
- co-worker, leaving to clean his apartment before his parents showed up to visit

There are many aspects, mostly good, to living so close to ones immediate family. For example, today started with a text message from my brother requesting caulk while we were out and led to a long discussion about shower curtain designs followed by my taking a perfectly good shower curtain and cutting it up to turn it into a new shower curtain design. It would (maybe) make more sense if you were there. Really it would only make sense if you were part or our family’s sub-culture.

There was an interesting segment on Momversation about if your child’s personality comes from Nature or Nuture (warning: video auto plays). I’ve wondered about that a lot myself these days, particularly as I’ve watched Ian develop his own little beginnings of a personality. It’s also come to light as I’ve developed an adult friendship with my cousin. We had pretty different childhoods from pretty opposite parents in many ways (other than the important ones of both coming from homes where we were loved and cared for). Yet there are lots of things she and I share now as adults that she keeps chalking up to “genetics”. She’s an only child and I have two siblings. She was raised Catholic and we never went to any churches in our family. She grew up in a manicured neighborhood of Virginia Beach while we never left our little rough around the edges area of Ocean View. My father is stubborn to a fault and her mother seems to carry the lion’s share of stubbornness in their family. And yet here we are decades later finding out that we’re really not so different after all.

For most of my life, I’ve felt like I was a Daddy’s girl. Mom always seemed to be the willow in our family, accommodating the strong winds of my father’s opinions. And as a child, I remember clinging to those strong opinions as if they were gospel. They would guide me through my life and help me make decisions.

But now, I feel more in the middle. Part of that has been Daddy’s depression making him more irrational and harder to relate to. There is just so much that he finds negative, it can be hard to really rally behind all those opinions. It’s exhausting.

Mom, however, is hopeful in spite of everything. I can’t remember who, but someone told her incredulously once that she was so happy and she didn’t have anything! She can find the sunbeam in any cloudy day, and also have the tenacity to weather the storms until that sunbeam makes an appearance. My father has said on many occasions that if she had his physical strength, she’d be dangerous because she can accomplish so much just from sheer will.

I see myself as a blend of the two of them, both nature and nurture. I have Dad’s fair skin and freckles but I have Mom’s smile. I yell like my father and I hum just like my mother. My feet and hands are slender like my mother’s and the rest of me is just a bit too tall like my father.

I have spent inordinate amounts of time tending to our own elderly pets, after watching the years my father cared for his dying cat, feeding him with a syringe and bathing him and tending to his grave. When Loki had the liver cancer and was sent home to die, I called my father in tears because he was the only one I trusted to tell me it was the right time to take my cat back to the vet and be put to sleep. I still worry, just like Dad would, about the woman that I didn’t stop to help off the highway because I’d already past her and would have had to cross three lanes of traffic. I believe firmly that cats have no business being on kitchen counters or other eating surfaces. I do all these things because I’m Daddy’s girl.

I send little gifts to friends for no good reason because my mother would come home with something for a neighbor or friend with no reason other than it was perfect for them. I lie in bed with Ian as he’s falling asleep, rubbing his back to the point where I feel like I’m about to fade away until he stirs and it rallies me to rub his back some more. I do this now because I remember being the kid in my mother’s bed as she rubbed my back and when she started to fall asleep I would wiggle just enough to keep her going. I get anxious whenever Rich starts to look for something in my stuff, and parrot my mother’s pleas of “please don’t mess in my goodies!” And I take home a shower curtain from my brother’s house to sew it into a new curtain for the window in his bathroom. I do all these things because I’m Mom’s daughter.

My parents are awesome and I can only hope Ian will think the same of Rich and I, even if we drive him crazy.

When my oldest brother Doug was around three, he and his parents (Mom and Lee) lived in a garage apartment at his grandparents’ house. His great grandfather on his dad’s side was living in the house and spent many an afternoon rocking in his chair on the porch reading a book.

After his great grandfather died, Doug asked why. My mother explained that Great Grandaddy was just very old and very tired so it was time for him to die.

Probably a year later, Mom and Lee had divorced and she and Doug were on their own. While Lee was never very helpful when we was around, my 25-year-old mother was feeling the stress of keeping things afloat as a single mom in 1963. One day she collapsed into the chair, saying, “Oh, your momma is so old and so tired.”

Doug burst into tears and ran to her sobbing, “I DON’T WANT YOU TO DIE!”

Rich doesn’t like it when I say that I’m tired. It’s not the statement, but more the tone of voice that I use – a small voice as if even making the statement wears me out. He says it worries him. So now I’ve found I don’t actually say I’m tired much anymore, or if I do, I try to be extra cheery about it.

I’m not actually all that tired these days. But every time I’m tempted to collapse in a chair and moan a “woe is me” I think of Doug. And then I realize things aren’t so bad.

Our birth instructor told us last week that by the 36th week we should have our bag packed and by the front door, just in case. I leaned over and whispered to Rich, “Um, that’s Tuesday. Guess we should make a list.”

Fortunately, I am a champion list maker. Both of my parents are list makers as well. My mother keeps 3×5 index cards in her shirt pocket with a variety of lists on them at all times. Their bathroom mirror is littered with several lists (some woefully out of date but still there like organizational relics).

Yesterday my father left for the family farm in North Carolina to make molasses. His family has made molasses every year since his father was doing it for everyone in Edgecombe County. It’s a bit of a family tradition. These days, though, it’s harder and harder to make it all happen. Daddy is in his late sixties, his brother is in his early seventies and most of us kids have other obligations that keep us away (this year, my belly keeps me close to home and away from the molasses cooker).

Since the farm is not used regularly, we end up bringing every possible thing we could think of needing for a weekend. I went to check on my mother who’s under the weather this afternoon and found Daddy’s packing list by the computer. For posterity, I’ll share it with you all.

Money, cell phone, charger, inverter
Camera, batteries, memory
Flashlight, big beam and charger
Back belt, neck brace, knee brace, shoe under-arch pipe
[the pipe is a contraption he created to help with foot cramps]
Insect repellent and itch meds
Umbrella and small ground mat

Acid reducer, Alka-Seltzer, Pepto-Bismol and Tums
Baby aspirin and gum [both help his sore throat]
Muscle relaxer, Motrin and large aspirin
Tooth picks, dental floss and nail file
Band aids, tweezers and hand lotion
Eye drops and eye patch [not sure what the eye patch is for]

Deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste
Razor & shave brush [my father still uses a camel hair shave brush]
Soap, wash cloths, shampoo, conditioner
Bath mat towel
Glasses, pens, handkerchief and comb
Night light, sleeping pants and shirt

Belt(s) and phone case(s)
Shirts, pants and shoes (work and nice)
Socks and underwear
Hats – summer or winter and gloves

Plastic cups and paper towels
Drinks, juice or energy drinks
Candy, nabs, nuts, dried fruit
Beanie weenies and canned fruit

Duct tape and tie wire
Spare tire, jack and flares
Tools and sockets
Lug wrench and pipe handle
Jumper cables or jump box
Bungy cord and rope
Ether [usually for starting the Model A Ford that runs the grinder]

He also had a short list of items to take home with him:

Dogwood tree
Acuba plant
Romex
Turnip seed

I have my own long and detailed list of things to bring with us to the hospital (thankfully all of which fit in a backpack), but my take home list pretty much only has one extra item on it:

Baby