Motherhood awesomeness, from a dad’s perspective

May 08, 2016 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols
It is said that some men have a secret longing they will never fulfill because it is all but impossible for

them to do so biologically. They wish they could experience, not vicariously, the wonder, the sublimity, the emotion, and even the raw physical pain of gestation and childbirth.
But we can’t, except maybe for someone like the ‘pregnant’ guy who made headlines some years ago. That visceral gift is Woman’s, and whether through creation, evolution, or both, it is the female’s prerogative in all but a tiny percentage of life forms on Planet Earth.
Many years ago I expressed my fascination with the miracles of conception, pregnancy and birth. I have this unbounded imagination that makes me consider the limitless possibilities of human experience. Maybe it had something to do with the poignancy in my mother’s voice when she shared with her children the trauma of losing her first two baby boys to childbirth complications while enduring nine pregnancies, or as I later considered my father’s lesser role in the process.
Also after my mother’s death while I was still a teenager, I had the benefit of surrogate motherhood in the form of my bigger sisters and some of the older women I met while teaching in the North West region. With respect to the latter, I will never forget the motherly ministrations of Lilian Alam and Bertha Fraser, both of whom passed on before I got a chance to personally thank them.
My own wife battled through seven pregnancies, and at the end of one of them I was privileged to witness the birth of my fifth son in the teacher’s house on the Aruka River, delivered by a ‘bush’ midwife – an elderly woman who left her bed at four a.m. and ventured by corial into the cold, misty darkness to bring that squirming, bloody, slippery infant into the world. At the climax of the procedure my wife gave a piercing scream, the likes of which I’d never heard before, or since. I just watched awestruck.
Pain is a subjective experience, so I guess we men may never know what the aptly-named labour pains are like. Neither my mother nor my wife were physically big or imposing women, but I often wonder about the title ‘the weaker sex’ given them, undoubtedly by a male. Physical weakness is such a shaky basis for human capability and endurance. For example, neither Harriet Tubman’s nor Helen Keller’s physiological or other limitations diluted their enormous contributions to humanity.
Obviously not all women who have given birth are considered great or even good mothers. I have witnessed firsthand the vicissitudes of motherhood as I observed over the years my mother, my six sisters and my wife raise 32 children between them, and occasionally give vent to some very un-motherly actions. It was painfully evident that they faced the brunt of ‘child labour’ from diapering (before the advent of the disposables) and temper tantrums to teenage angst and open rebellion. Apart from corporal discipline, my father and brothers-in-law were mostly just there as nominally good fathers. I wanted to be different.
I tried; I really did, but eventually fell short of the lofty expectations I set myself.  Nevertheless I did my share of mothering, and frequently told relatives and friends that I did for my children everything that was possible for a father to do; the exception of course being what was anatomically impossible –  breast suckling. I took cleaning, changing and washing diapers, feeding, bathing, and sick-tending my children all in stride, and as I fought insomnia, often calmed a crying infant at 2 a.m. while my wife capitulated to sleep.
I lapsed in the moral and religious departments, and it was left mainly to my wife to take up the slack in those areas of discipline. This is a trend which seems to have grown exponentially in the past couple of decades as more Guyanese fathers (and I suspect fathers elsewhere) leave this kind of training to the mothers of their children. Or leave permanently! Millions of Caribbean mothers as well as many in the United States and other developed countries would know just what I’m talking about.
Now it should be clear to anyone with half a brain that women who become mothers have the most awesome honour and responsibility, embracing the greatest joys and most profound grief, in bringing children into the world and nurturing them to maturity. Children are their very flesh and blood in a way that no man can truly understand. They know those wailing, gurgly, messy, joyously-alive bundles of humanity are theirs. We men may not even be absolutely sure we are their fathers.
What does it really feel like to have a tiny living, growing, moving human being inside of you, we ask, as if ever there was a rhetorical question?  A billion multiplying cells budded from the union of egg and sperm, heart pulsing, blood cycling, neurons firing, lungs filling and deflating to the reflexive motion of the diaphragm. Small wonder that the female of the species, considered by many to be deadlier than the male, may fight to the death to protect her offspring.
Yes, some of us overtly or subliminally envy the sacred and secret gift of motherhood bequeathed to women by nature. The psychic, unbreakable bond established in the womb and cemented at birth is practically outside our scope of experience. Incidentally one of the most heartbreaking of human illnesses is that post-natal psychological disorder that causes a mother to reject her newborn and her own maternal instinct to protect and preserve that which was once a physical part of her.
Love is considered the most powerful of human expressions and yearnings, yet, I believe, the most abused, misunderstood, and misdirected. Nevertheless it seems to find its deepest expression in the devotion of mother to child, and comes closest to the biblical definition found in 1 Corinthians which declares that love (Or charity) is long-suffering; isn’t envious, does not boast, seek its own, or is easily provoked. It bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things; above all it never fails. And if charity begins at home, then in all creation, a mother’s love comes closest to this ideal.
It’s a pity that this noble expression has become so commercialized, with all the media platitudes and pandering that tend to cheapen its significance. Although there’s nothing wrong with gift-sending or having Mom pampered with a makeover or a special dinner, many of these gestures too often tend to be dutiful and cosmetic rather than heartfelt; in any case there are 364 other Mother’s Days in the year. Hugs and kisses are free, and quality time still trumps texting and Facebook greetings.
The world is filled with stories about the devotion and depth of a mother’s love, and I don’t need to rehash any of them. What I will do instead is share with readers this short poetic tribute I have written for mothers everywhere. The name of it is ‘Umbilicus’. Hope you like it.

The blood-cord connection severs at birth
shrivels or is buried; reclaimed by the earth
yet remains – invisible, illuminating as light
when an infant first mirrored its mother’s sight.
Unseen, unbidden, as they fly with the years
weathering storms of apprehension and tears –
The cord may stretch thin; may fray at the edge
but the core stays firm, inured by the hedge
which providence plants in the heart of a mother
that can never, ever be replaced by another.

Have a great Mother’s Day everyone!

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