But that's not what I meant, not at all

I met my friend B for lunch yesterday, and we caught up on the various goings-on in our families. Her youngest daughter is just months older than Munchkin, and we used to do mother-baby yoga together. We try to keep in touch, but she's incorporated her husband's three prior children into their family home and working full time and I'm working and moving and and and. It was nice to see her, nice to sit and dish and share photos. We were talking about how we wished we could get together more, socialize more. "You should really meet my friend J," she exclaimed, "We could all hang out together! She's so much like you, she's a professional and she's really cynical about everything and is always talking about giving her kids away and how cranky she is."

?

Do I come across like I resent motherhood? When I was pregnant, and obsessively describing everything for Pynchon, he asked how bad it was: "You're always complaining about how your back hurts and your feet are swollen and you're so weepy, you must really hate being pregnant."

?!

No, no, no. That's not what I meant, not what I mean, at all. I actually really loved being pregnant (except the last three weeks. No one likes being nine months pregnant. But even then, it's very exciting to be so near to becoming a mom, to meeting your baby. I remember being very impatient, but also feeling very happy and very special). Every day I catch myself being grateful for my baby, my little girl, my giant Munchkin: she hugs me, she makes me laugh, she sees the world with new eyes and shares her wonder with me.

I'm terribly afraid I've made myself misunderstood.

Once, when I was in my mid-twenties, I was driving with my mom, a long road trip to the ancestral cottage in Northern Ontario. Having given the matter some thought, I asked her that, if she were born in 1973 instead of 1944, would she have chosen to have kids? I thought not: her first husband, my dad, was a philanderer and a drinker and having the kids was part of an attempted domestication strategy. My mom is a very independent, quiet person, who values her career and likes to do her own thing. She was married five years before choosing to become pregnant with me: if she had to do it again, I thought maybe she wouldn't.

It's not like my mom was not a great, great mom to have as a child: she was. Full of hugs and songs and mother-daughter trips to others cities, on the train, to museums and festivals and parks. Matching homemade outfits for my sister and I, careful hairdos and carefully cleaned faces. She took a lot of pride in us and worked hard to provide us a home and a life together. But did she enjoy it? I wasn't sure, then. Mom also often shooed us out of the kitchen in the post-work, pre-dinner rush. She shushed us away from her ankles when she wanted to read the paper. She retreated to her room after supper to work on her university courses for her upgrades. She got annoyed by the exuberance and volume of our play.

Mom answered my question quickly and in the affirmative: of the tragedy of her first marriage, she was most happy to have, as she said, 'my two precious girls.' She enjoyed watching us grow into people, that crazy amazing process of physical and mental and emotional growth. She loved taking us places with her, dressing us up, seeing us smile. I was surprised.

And now? Here I am wondering how B and Pynchon can imagine me to be anything but thrilled with my life, and the tables have turned. You know what? I do complain a lot. I don't know why, but I can't seem to help it. I'm a literary critic and prone in any case to overanalysis, and overanalysis has never been confused with pure, in-the-moment joy of experience. I'm not like that, I guess. I don't hesitate to tell people that Munchkin was a pretty severe trial as Miss Baby, what with the no-sleeping and the several months of constant yelling or constant marching around the house in the sling. I didn't like the yelling or the marching or the no-sleeping. But I did love breast-feeding, I loved her tiny hands and her big blue eyes. I loved her giant cloth diapers and her bony little bum. I loved her gummy smile and her raised eyebrows. As a toddler, she's much easier. Do I like tantrums? No. Do I like her current mommy-mommy-mommy phase where, if she could, she would suck the very life out of my? Well, I don't like it for 10 hours in a row. Do I want to get up at 2:30 for "Hug! Bottle! Hug! Bottle!"? No, but then, I really really need my sleep. But I love her beyond anything I might ever have imagined. She brings me joy inestimable. More simply, I like having her around all the time, this no-longer-new member of our family, grabbing me by the hand and dragging me to the living room to play 'circle time.' I melt when she wraps up her Pinky Pig in her doudou and tells it sternly to "be quiet a go-a-sleep now, Pinky Pig, wake up a-morning!".

I was overjoyed to become pregnant. I revelled in that process of growing my daughter inside me. I was amazed at her birth, and forged into motherhood in the crucible of her infancy. Every day she wraps herself a little more around my heart and I can't imagine life without her, though, I must admit, I can very easily imagine a couple of hours without her, and fairly often.

I look around my house, at the pull-up tucked into my duvet cover, at the mangled board book in the middle of the entryway, at the little plastic duck wedged into the tub drain, at the 'thermometers' (pens) hidden in strange places all over and my heart is glad: what energy my Munchkin brings to life, to my life. Yes, I complain and yes, I'm honest about not being cheerful about everything all the time. But I'm happy, happier, really and well and truly, than I've ever been. I chose and I choose this family. I guess I just wanted to put that out there, for the record, because maybe I don't say it enough.

My baby girl, my sweetiepooper, my Munchkin, my joy.