Open Swim

On Saturday night, while driving a route Jon and I traveled many times while I was pregnant, I rediscovered a song that nearly wore out my iPod when Jack was six months old. Back then, Jack was on constant sleep strike, and music seemed a safe alternative to a horse tranquilizer. This song in particular—“Live for Real” by K’s Choice—seduced our manic Gremlin night after night while we frantically drove him through low-lit streets and ran red lights, terrified of stopping. These roving concerts became so routine, I quickly turned deaf to my favorite music. Lyrics that once seemed profound became nonsense words, and tunes that first seduced my ear plucked at my nerves as torturously as Jack’s cries. More than anything, I hated my dependency on music. I hated that its cure felt like a return of air. I hated that it sometimes wasn’t a cure at all.

Evidently, all of those drives hardwired “Live for Real” into Jack’s brain, because he remembered the song two years later. As usual, he sat in the back, armed with Mr. Bear and his favorite pacifier, only now his seat faced forward, and I’d upgraded my ticket to the front. Before rediscovering K’s Choice, I shuffled through our more recent playlists not expecting—or needing—Jack to fall asleep. Soon I became bored, and while Jack chatted about the various cars crossing our path, I began a trek through the past. First, I discovered Putumayo’s Dreamland, my main source of human connection during those very first weeks of repetitive nursing marathons. For the first time in two years, I could hear the opening bars of “Naïma” without hallucinating the incursion of a rabid baby’s suck. A few albums later, when I found my way back to K’s Choice, Jack clapped. “This is a sleepy song,” he said. He closed his eyes, hugged Mr. Bear, and before I could wish him a good night’s rest, fell fast asleep.

In two weeks, Jack will turn two and a half. Already, we’ve traveled so many miles and worn out so many songs together. Jon and I have discarded expectations more quickly than Jack can soil diapers and have reinvented our family more frequently than Jack can grow. Considering the extent of these renovations and the journeys we’ve already logged, I’m surprised to discover how poorly I keep track of the shifts in scenery. It isn’t until I travel a lost road or happen upon some blatant marker of time that I note the changes. And yet there are so many differences between the old and the new—between the then of Jack’s babyhood and the now of his toddlerhood. Friends who haven’t seen him in awhile remark on the magnificent changes in him. Harder to see—and yet maybe even more stark—are the changes in me.

By the time we decided to conceive Jack, I had logged in so many hours on my analyst’s couch, I naively assumed I’d mastered the old demons and was absolutely, 100%, no-doubt-in-the-world ready to leave my mark on a child. This overconfidence alone should have been my first warning sign of impending doom. No matter—as soon as very big Jack barreled through what suddenly felt like a very narrow birth canal and hurdled into the world wailing like a Screaming Mandrake, I felt the true vastness of hell. I couldn’t sleep because he couldn’t sleep, and worse, I couldn’t find a way to nourish myself because he constantly needed nourishment. Most excruciating were the terrible growing pains of a heart doubled in size. I didn’t know what to do with all my new love. Sometimes, Jack shined so bright my eyes ached. I was a kid fed mountains of cotton candy and Jolt and then thrown about on amusement park rides while electronic dance music blared in my ears. Often, I felt close to throwing up. In those early months, nauseatingly drunk on love and overwhelmed by funhouse mirrors that reflected back just how far I was from ever becoming the mother I’d envisioned, I sometimes worried I’d made a mistake. It wasn’t that I ever regretted giving birth to my radiant Jack; I just wasn’t sure I could give birth to myself.

Before Jack, I could skirt around the edges of life and flirt with possibilities that never needed to come true. And then Jack was here and he needed a guide. How could I give him life if I wasn’t fully alive? As I saw it, I had two choices: I could surrender to the hell of birth—my own birth—or else watch my screaming-for-life baby slowly die. Until recently, I didn’t realize that I’d actually made a choice. And then we were driving that old road and listening to an old song and my very alive toddler boy was soothing himself to sleep and I realized two groundbreaking years had passed. Across that time, I had made an important series of choices. I’d taken one step, and then another, and then another. Listening to that song we’d nearly worn out all of those months back, I realized I could hear the lyrics again. My ears were back—clearer, even. My eyes no longer hurt. Thanks to Jack—and yes, thanks to my own courage—I no longer have to worry about my heart outgrowing its shell. Somewhere along the journey through hell, I found a way to finally Live for Real.

Live for Real