Being Home: A Prologue

It is January and the average temperatures have been in the twenty’s. The bare, pear tree branches sway vigorously outside the living room windows, whipping menacingly against the house. Longer, darker hours make the concrete paths less inviting.

Six weeks ago, I gave birth to my second child, Emerson. Months of expanding and rounding then reaching the zenith: contracting, gripping, moaning, shutting my eyes, wanting to escape from the sharp pain spreading from pelvis to back and thighs, waiting, pushing, bleeding, then finally meeting the being that had been in the niche of me.

Now I am at the denouement. Organs and muscles are retracting, finding their former places. I am ebbing with new life, using my body’s other functions, the magic fountains (as my husband and daughter call my breasts), to sustain my son. I marvel as his cheeks get rounder and puffier, his legs stretch and fill his pants and his feet begin to push past the bottoms of his one-pieces, his fingers begin to grip my fingers, and his eyes begin to focus on objects.

Yet sometimes I feel as if am going nowhere, that life is a prosaic tundra and I am an insignificant wanderer, less worthy than others because I am at home in pajamas and not receiving a pay check. I feel as if I am floating in an isolated world outside of collective time, unaware of and separate from other people and events around me. At the same time, I realize I am in the center of my own little universe within the warm walls of this Brooklyn apartment. And within my universe, there is a lot of subtle life and excitement, life that requires hard labor with few breaks.

Home abounds with unpredictable and unforgettable joys and challenges, emotionally charged moments, moments that can shake and test my sanity. Emerson keeps me up at three in the morning as he loudly slurps and gulps down milk from my breast and later spits up into the hood of my newly washed sweatshirt. Jacinta tells me I am the best mommy ever then later spits in my face as I give her a time out. I wake up to my husband’s banana walnut pancakes. Another time, I want to spit in his face after he tells me that I shouldn’t use sarcasm to discipline our children.

Because my physical boundaries are limited, I find myself focusing on the limitless, inner expanses. A newborn in winter and an extended maternity leave is giving me room to grow. As a mother, writer, thinker, cook, and in general, a sentient being who cares about the world around me. And being restricted to the neighborhood does not negate that what I do on a daily, hourly, minutely basis goes beyond the now. The feeding, disciplining, loving, cuddling, reading, hygiene-maintaining, etc. all extend into each child’s immediate and distant future.

Having to confront the inner life means learning to be at home with myself and my family, accepting myself for who I am, accepting my children and husband for who they are as individuals, trying to cultivate and nourish all of our strengths while acknowledging and improving our flaws. It also means making the transition from being a full-time middle school teacher to being a full-time parent and understanding the complicated emotions that go along with this new role, a role I am not entirely accustomed to. It also means learning to be more selfless, making the family’s needs and wants the priority over my own, letting go of certain minutia such as weekend matinees or happy hour specials that once were a large part of my life yet still trying to find time and space to be kind to myself and incorporate things that I enjoy.

Writing is an example of something I enjoy that helps me balance myself yet also involves my family since much of my writing reflects them. This necessary activity has lead me to this page, this space. In this on-going, open journal (I don’t like the word “blog”; it sounds like a rude expletive), I will be including poetry and prose on birth, motherhood, identity, family, country and culture, my Filipino ancestry, New York, poetry, literature, health, food, education, etc. Another basis for this writing space is to revive the numerous poems growing in my document folders and to write new work, to give them a home where they will not be too easily forgotten, where their existence goes beyond the diameter of my computer.

Ultimately, I hope to create dialogue about the topics I write about, share my poetry, get feedback on my work in progress, nourish my creative spirit, and simply be part of the vast community of writers and thinkers.