An Offering

Patricia Rapkoch Johnson
Volume 23, No. 3

In many ways, I have always been a mother. I come to this idea hesitantly, breathlessly, like offering a tender breast to an infant for the first time. At that first suck, I gasp at the sharp pain, bite my lip, fighting the urge to pull back, yet almost smile. The milk flows. It is good. I am good. And I realize that I feel the instinct itself – to mother, to give care – in much the same way. It is my history overflowing.

As the oldest of seven children, I've spent a large portion of my life caring for brothers and sisters. I can vaguely remember diapering my baby brother, trying to remember which way to put the pin in so I wouldn't stick him, the hairline at the base of my neck damp with exertion. I am about five or six years old, too young to reason through the problem, merely aware that this is how my mother did it. I struggle to close the pin over the thick cloth. A slow exhaling. Done. I smile as I pick up my brother. The diaper sags and bunches, probably leaks, but I proudly carry him to my mother.

As a result of this sort of childhood experience, the transition into motherhood was not difficult for me. In fact, it came very naturally. It was, rather, that innate struggle between offering and pulling back that confused me.

I wasn't raised LDS, so my fundamental feelings about motherhood spring less from counsel or doctrine and more from intuition. My own mother always worked but chose a home-based career with flexible hours so she could be home with us most of the time. She thrived on setting and achieving her professional and family goals and teaching us to achieve ours. She always encouraged me to pursue my own dreams and ambitions. I felt from my mother that I could be anything, do anything, accomplish anything. I never assumed I would choose my mother's exact course, but I admired the model she had constructed. 

The struggle came when I actually bore my own child and decided to stay home with him. Sometimes decisions are more the result of circumstance than anything else, or at least a mix of circumstance and intention. One week after Cole was born, my husband and I moved to Chicago, where he began a graduate program. If I hadn't moved and, as a result, quit my job, I'm not sure how things would have turned out. I am certain I wouldn't have worked full time; besides not having that kind of energy, I truly felt committed to being home with my child.

However, I may not have stayed home full time. Moving to a new city, having a small baby, and also having some fairly serious postpartum complications resulted in my being home full time from the start. I suddenly felt immersed in this Mormon identity that was telling me I could be washed clean, could become a new person – a mother. I felt as if this new identity was offered as a golden chance, a transformation, a "putting on the new woman"; yet I had no desire to cast off the old me. 

I didn't know how to meld these two identities. I kept pondering these questions: How do I maintain myself – my own personhood – when all my history has pointed to motherhood? Should I be two identities, "the mom" one and "the me" one, or do they blend together somehow? 

When I try to examine what exactly I was afraid of losing, I find it difficult to pinpoint, like a lingering fragrance or the sudden quickening of a heartbeat. I was afraid less of losing a concrete skill than of losing vitality; I wanted to remain interesting and interested. Whether I worked or not, I wanted to have areas in my life that are mine alone to discover, to challenge myself, to enjoy. Even though I find many examples of accomplished women who are mothers all around me, I was afraid that becoming a mother myself meant I would lose all of these things – that they would be absorbed, diffused, exhausted in the immense responsibility of motherhood. Logical or not, I was afraid. 

I don't believe that I ever made a well-thought-out, soul-searching decision to be home full time; rather, I decide continuously as I grow as a person, as we grow as a family. Right now I am home with my son, and it is right. In the two and half years since my son was born, I've discovered a wealth of paradox that I can't explain but that has given me a glimpse into the wholeness I strive for.

Much of my change-the-world attitude has toned down (although I still have my moments). I often feel that I have lost myself because I spend all my time and energy being a mother. Yet, as Christ describes in the New Testament, I have at the same time found myself. I am the world to one child. My kiss heals, my touch soothes, my voice inspires. And while I know there is much in the world I cannot control, motherhood has given me an insight into my potential.

It is through motherhood that I have become in some ways more keenly aware of myself. I've experienced this evolving awareness in some physical ways, and I am certain that these physical experiences parallel some deeper emotional epiphanies. 

My first attempts at breastfeeding were very hands-on, shirt-off sort of experiences. I think I spent more than fifty percent of my days shirtless in the anxious hope that the air would ease the discomfort, as well as feeling why bother to put my shirt on, only to take it off again within the hour? This function that all my life had seemed so natural in other women felt so awkward for me. So I walked around in my half-dressed state for weeks, feeling safe in clinging to my somewhat reduced (after childbirth) sense of modesty. I lived on the tenth floor of an apartment building. Who was going to see me? 

LHK

One afternoon, I sat in my living room, shirt off, settled into another 45-minute breastfeeding session, when I heard a whirring sound. Having just moved to Chicago, I was still getting used to how loud the city was and assumed it was coming from the street. Glancing at the window, I suddenly saw a helmet rising, followed by a man. Shocked, I grabbed the blanket off the back of my couch, threw it over myself, and, clutching a not-to-be-deterred child, ran from the room, my breast still firmly in his mouth. I'd never even considered window washers! 

Over time, though, I became comfortable with a part of my body that had earlier in my life been a source of discomfort, confusion, and uncertainty. Several months after my son was born, I was talking to a friend and realized that I didn't know what to do with my hands. I was so used to holding him, bouncing him, touching him, my arms felt awkward and ungraceful without him. What had I done with them before? 

I began to look at my hands to understand in a new way that they are a part of me and to own my use of them. I became aware that I use my hands to express myself – yes, to mother, but also to write, to talk, to caress, to eat, to function as a whole me. If these individual parts of me can serve dual purposes, then can't I as a whole being do the same? My breast can nourish, but it is also a fundamental part of my body, my appearance. My hands can diaper babies and stroke little backs, but they can also communicate and write and express me. I began to hope that I, as an entire being, could also achieve wholeness. 

In some ways, I am very tied down; in others, I am so free. By staying home, I can't pursue some personal goals. For instance, I want to go to graduate school, but I don't feel as if this is the right time for my family. I've taken classes that I have greatly enjoyed, but they admittedly get scheduled around my son and my husband's job. I sometimes miss the rush and excitement of a deadline and the praise of others for a job well done.

But there is definitely a flip side. I am free to enjoy things that are of immeasurable value to me; I just have to be creative and patient with the time frame. I can read a book, go to a museum, visit my family. I can work on my writing. I can be with my son. 

Last week, during the first snowfall of the year, I walked into the living room to find my two-year-old son with his nose pressed against the window, each puff of breath clouding the glass. He looked up at me with hopeful, shining eyes, "Play in snow?" he asked. I started to say we'd go out later but caught myself as a rush of remembrance took the breath right out of me. I remembered that feeling, that excitement. "Go get your boots," I told him, my fingers lingering on his soft hair. We bundled up and went outside. He stomped across the yard, while I stood and watched him. Suddenly, without even thinking, I scooped up a handful of snow, packed it firm, and threw it, hitting him in the belly. He looked at me with delighted surprise. And I felt free.

Patricia lives with her son, Cole, and her husband, Rhett, in the Boston area. She adamantly pursues her love of writing through classes and writing groups in between sessions of play dough and trips to sprinkler parks. She is expecting her second child in November.

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