misplaced mama

What dreaming does is give us the fluidity to enter into other worlds by destroying our sense of knowing this world. -  Carlos Castaneda

The waves crash against the windows. The room is circular and the bed in the middle is covered, no, piled with white cloud-like quilts.  The girls are jumping on the bed, laughing, falling, playing, and teasing each other.  I am just a bystander, not part of the scene yet.  Each wave that crashes against the window makes me cringe, scares me, pulls me to collect the girls and protect them, but I am not really there in the room, just my mind’s eye watches the scene.  The waves continue to crash, a pattern I begin to count in my head, like the kind of count I used to do as a little girl between lightning and thunder during storms. The waves would come every 5 then every 4, and then there was no pause between the crashes, the water just persisted against the window.   My mother’s voice, like a song, entered my ears, its okay their not glass, they won’t shatter, they’ll just shake you up a bit.

And then I enter the room, my body does, and I am conscious of the fresh air circulating from somewhere and I keep my eyes on the window and I see fish swimming in pools, colorful blurs of scales, pass by. I have a blackbird on my shoulder; its beak rests against my hair.  Even in the dream I know I am part of magic, and the bird guides me further in.  The girls see me and start to cry and reach for me, asking me to hold them.  I get on the bed and they jump around me, near me, giggling again.   They pet the bird.  And then suddenly I feel pressure and it feels so good, finally, I am opening up.  I look down and the baby is crowing, being born right there at that moment.  The head comes out without me even feeling it and then its hands, which are covered in little sock puppets.  She is giggling at us.  The waves keep crashing.  B runs in the room and the girls say, the baby is born!  the baby is born!  her name is ZaZa Spiral! Spiral ZaZa! I look down at her and she is the size of a two year old with flax colored hair and dimples and she speaks to me, in this dream though, it’s not English.  It’s an unfamiliar tongue.  The girls laugh at her, and hug her, like they understand what she says.  I’m sure that they do.  I wake up and listen and hear our Deep Sleep Sea CD, playing the splashing wave sounds over and over again, on repeat, all night long.

***

My sister, who is a self-proclaimed clairvoyant, told me months ago that when she thought of the baby she just saw the number 29.  You’ll have the baby on the 29th.  Maybe the 26th, I could have seen an upside-down 6.

Like hell I will. This baby will be here by the 22nd.

Today is the 28th.  Last night was the fifth dream I had about birthing this baby.  The first one was of a girl, and was much earlier in the pregnancy and the next two were of boys, both who crowned without my knowing.  The first one came out talking, asking me to call him Jim.  The second one he came out so easy and fast, and with a penis so small that I thought it could possibly be a clitoris.  When B saw the penis in the dream, he sighed and said, ah, the curse of the Irish.

Last  night’s dream was a mix of all my emotions; whatever they are.  At this point they are not separate from me, they are me, and I have lost myself in them.  Perhaps lost is not the right word; I have found myself aching, within them, feeling every last part of me; my muscles are softened and stretched as far as they can go.  My tissues saturated with a million memories.  My blood is on high and it heats me up and only my tears cool me, relieve me. The fear of being overwhelmed and empty all at once, the wisdom of my mother who knows that with trust nothing will completely shatter, just shake.  And this baby, coming out so large; I can’t help but wonder: how much longer will I stay pregnant?  But as the Castaneda said, dreams give us fluidity.  That water surrounding me is a reminder that I am fluid.  As soon as I let down my walls of expectation, the water will wash over me and I will become it, taken over by the other world, leaving this one behind for some time so I can mesh with the spirit world and help my baby cross onto earthly ground.

***

In between words, I cannot help but kiss every inch of Sula’s bare little back.  She stands next to me as I type, so close that I can smell her breath and the orange-ish scent of her little dready hair.  I can hear the slight rattle in her chest, recovering from her cold.  I have been so gifted.  Can these gifts of life keep continuing?  Sometimes I feel like I should have stopped while I was ahead.  And then I think of my mother.  Who brought seven us here, and I wonder if she ever thought that she was pressing her luck.  I think of her not with me during this time, the first time ever she has not been with me post-partum.  She lays in a hospital bed, her flesh cut open and her insides removed and rearranged, waiting for pathology reports to come while she tries to pass gas, so finally, after four days she can be given a sip of water or a bite to eat. I spoke with her today and she said she was glad I was having the baby at home.  Hospitals are indeed too full of sickness to bring in life.  That made me smile, my mother, turning into a homebirth activist.  Her voice was frail, something I am not used to.  I felt like she was the child and I was the mama. I remember my dream and her voice in my ear, they won’t shatter, only shake. And she’s right.  I am too fluid to shatter, no matter what.  And right now I can’t even let myself shake.  I have to let the water come in and take me over. It’s the only way.

***

I’m not the pilot of this gridwork, this birthlight. Floating somewhere between hope and fear, I slowly let go of time and space as this world has defined it.  Baby comes from another world and I can only wait for that perfect synergy, of this world and that one, when a new person on the verge of life and myself are both ready to let go and allow Radical Trust bring this on, this adventure in Unconditional Love.