The Motherhood of Sisterhood

Late last year, somewhere in my second trimester of pregnancy, a pregnant panhandler came through my subway car. She was farther along than myself, looked to be in her third trimester, and she was in pretty rough shape.  She asked for food or money, and my heart just broke. Homeless people are always hard on my heart, but seeing this woman down and out while her body was creating a life just ripped at my every seam. I gave her a snack from my bag and she thanked me profusely while I tried to brush it off as no big deal.

She may not have even been able to tell I was pregnant in my coat, but I was painfully aware of our shared truth. We are both insatiably hungry while our bodies are undergoing total transformation, building new bodies. But I can pack snacks in my bag for the day to help stave off the hunger and cravings, and tonight I will go home to my house and my supportive wife. My friends and family will throw me a baby shower to help me get the things I need for this baby. They will ensure this baby is never in need, and if they didn’t, we have steady jobs and would still somehow be able to figure it out for ourselves. We are safe and warm at night. We can prepare for our child.

Who helped you make this baby and where are they now? Did you even feel you had a choice, or are you just left to deal with the consequences of someone else’s choice? Where are you sleeping tonight? What fears and anxieties keep you up at night as you feel your due date looming closer and have no one to turn to for help and advice? Do you worry that your child will be taken from you because you can’t provide proper care? Do you worry that your child WON’T be taken from you and you will spend every moment frantically trying to prepare for the next, worrying about how to keep your child safe and thriving? How do you protect yourself and stay safe as you become increasingly more vulnerable? Who helps you when your back and hips are aching so much you feel you can’t walk one more step, and yet gathering another few quarters makes the difference in whether you can eat tonight? I wanted to cry and scream at the injustice of the world, and also take her home and let her run a hot bath and elevate her swollen feet and be able to feel the wonder of the creation within her instead of the exhaustion and anxiety and loneliness I saw weighing her down.

Then a week or so ago, as spring finally turned the corner (how far away my spring baby seemed when winter was only just approaching!), I saw a fat squirrel sitting on a tree branch. In unspoken agreement, my wife and I always sit still in the car when we pull into our driveway and see cardinals in the backyard. This time there were a male and a female bouncing around from branch to fencepost to bush, and we watched them until they finally flew off. Then I noticed the squirrel on the branch of our tree, contentedly eating a nut. I was initially surprised at its rotundity after a long, harsh winter, and then after a few seconds it hit me that she wasn’t fat, she was pregnant! It seemed like a logical conclusion at this time of the year, and I just watched her in awe. I wondered if this was her first pregnancy and if she knew what was going on. Did she feel extra hungry and thirsty and tired? Did she start to notice more and more strange stirrings and squirming in her abdomen and wonder what the heck was going on? Or does she just go through life unblinking and not pay much attention to these changes when she’s just trying to survive each moment, focusing on finding food and safety? She’s so strong - she just goes through her pregnancy finding the next nut, lugging her heavy body up the tree. She can’t play the pregnancy card. Other squirrels don’t encourage her to just relax in the grass while they watch for predators or offer to fetch her an acorn. She’s just gotta keep going! She doesn’t know any different, and those male squirrels have no clue what she’s quietly enduring in order to propagate the species.

Pregnancy is the first nearly universal condition that has made me feel so connected to beings across demographics and even species. I wonder about the teen mothers I work with, both the reluctant and the intentional. I wonder about the experiences of people older than me, like my mother, my wife’s grandmother, and my rabbi (who adopted, but who I imagine experienced similar planning, anticipation, fear and excitement, and impatience waiting for her daughter to join their family). I feel so connected to all of these mothers, and also so curious about how different their outer experiences are or were within their own contexts despite the fact that exactly the same thing was happening inside each of us. Sometimes this breaks my heart and sometimes this lifts and moves me, but I’m always grateful for the connection.