The anticipation of the first cry

While I am unable to predict how I am going to feel upon hearing it, I’m excited for our child to enter this village-universe we created

Last night as I was falling asleep, I tried to articulate to my partner the sensation of nervous anticipation lodged inside my gut. “It’s like I’ve paid for a rollercoaster ride and waited my turn and any minute now I will be seated,” I said. “There’s no going back.” Unlike my sister, or my niblings, I’ve always had to be coaxed into vertiginous rides. When I do consent, grudgingly, my way of coping with the unknown is to keep my eyes closed until I make it to the other side. I can rarely mask my relief when it’s over. I am happy to be returned to the comfort of the ground. I have a memory of being five years old and on a rollercoaster at Fun City in Kuwait. I screamed so loudly about wanting to get off, they stopped the ride and let me go. I cannot vouch for whether this really happened, or if I imagined it, but I remember it vividly. It was no wonder then that when I fell asleep last night I was visited by a recurring dream, one that has manifested ahead of many life-altering occasions—I find myself at the wheel of a car, except I don’t know how to drive, but I’m expected to fake it. I somehow usually manage, reminding myself of whatever basics I may have absorbed osmotically. Last night, for instance, I kept saying over and over, ‘keep your feet close to the brakes’.

I don’t know, though, if I’ve ever encountered a moment as climactic as this one—a clear case of a phase of my life coming to an end and a new one beginning. There really is no going back, no returning to anything prior. Today is a Wednesday, and while I normally dispatch my columns on Thursdays, this time I know I will spend tomorrow recovering from the scheduled C-Section and navigating the commencement of maternity. Though I’m aware that since I conceived I ceased being a singular entity as I became host to another being, I am still baffled by the knowledge that I will finally encounter our child in all his flesh-and-bone-ness, that this being whose presence I have felt from the moment it tumbled into my uterus, whose heartbeat I saw and heard when it was still embryo, and who I’ve watched grow over the months—the space occupying his four-chambered heart enlarging, his thigh bone stretching astonishingly to suggest his advanced height, will no longer be crouched protectively within my womb but a sovereign entity.

I don’t know if I will be undone by the first cry that will announce his fragility. The inability to predict how I am going to feel is precisely what likens this moment to a rollercoaster ride. I have both craved and felt intimidated by the notion of something being dependent on me for its existence, which is why I’ve never had a pet in my adult life. I chose motherhood only when I felt secure enough that I wouldn’t be going at it alone, that I had someone by my side to bear witness, and to participate in that journey. And that’s why, I suppose, I told my partner that I wasn’t so scared of the rollercoaster. “You’re with me,” I said. It isn’t just the two of us either. The entire feminist village I have been building for the last 15 years is coming along with us on the ride.

I think about that leap of faith I took back in June 2020… in three months it’ll have been two years and here I am, able to understand and communicate in a language totally not my own, fully embracing this feeling of being at home. And besides all the people who are with me here and my family back in Mumbai and Dubai, I have this dispersed coterie of dear friends who have been continually in touch, participating in my journey, holding my hand, cheering me forward. My village is wonderfully diverse and is presenced not only by those who have themselves transitioned into motherhood but also those who have had the wisdom and daring to decide to be child-free, people both coupled as well as audaciously single and independent; as well as people who have been wrestling with the complexities of being reproductively challenged. To have in one’s corner the joy of those who have grace enough to look beyond their grief is a blessing. It reveals a magnanimity of spirit. 

I’m excited for our child to gradually encounter each of the incredible people in our lives, and to be altered by each exchange. Yesterday, as I lounged on our balcony, soaking in the delight of the early spring sun I also thought about how wonderful it’ll be for our child to spend his fourth trimester in the glow of an Alpine landscape returning into a state of bloom… Apple and cherry blossoms speckling the wild and the cultivated, the lushness of magnolias arresting his vision, the tender green-bitter-sweet shoots of fig trees swishing on the tail wind of the afternoon breezes that will make their way from Lake Garda, the resilient yellows of dandelion being chopped by my father-in-law to make a salad, the penitent-pilgrim-like postures of snowdrops and daffodils infiltrating the valley, the intoxicating sweetness of night jasmine further elevating our senses. It is within this marvellously relational village-universe that we will take our first steps as parents.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.

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