The gynaecologist
© Melina Magdalena (2011)
I was of no use to her.
She could not make me pregnant.
Your pituitary gland
She explained
Is working hard to stimulate the ovaries
But every woman is born
With a finite number of eggs
So that’s it
I said
Stunned
And
She shrugged
I remember
She used the word
Unfortunately
She’d fluffed around for 15 minutes
Before showing us in
We’d sat waiting
The baby was fussy
By the time we got settled
In her consulting room
Faces turned
Expectantly
Awaiting her plan of action
For making our miracle
He was on the boob
What had she been thinking?
I can’t possibly charge those women $120
Just for giving the results of a blood test
But she did
I tried to make small talk
What can I expect from
Menopause?
She wasn’t interested
In giving me advice
On that
I changed the subject.
Instead
We discussed the décor.
Ashamed
Of my condition
I couldn’t face the receptionist
So I let my partner pay
I took the baby
out to the car
Averted my gaze
All the way home
Drummed on the steering wheel
Impatient
For my pillow
That would capture
My lost dream
sorrow
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
My Cuckoo's Nest
My Cuckoo’s Nest
© Melina Magdalena (2011)
It isn’t fate, so I am told. This is a world of my own making. I created my circumstances, made my choices and have therefore no reason to rail against them. Instead, let me accept the situation in good faith, realising how much better off I am, than others in this world who, I must assume, equally chose their fates and have therefore no logical reason to deplore their circumstances which are, I admit, so much worse than mine.
The cuckoo famously lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, which raise the young, while the biological young of the cuckoo-raisers are evicted from their parent’s nests to splatter splatter on the ground and die.
This is not quite the scenario I am painting. My own young, raised successfully to adulthood, have just about flown the coop already.
The cuckoo is also a symbol of someone who is foolish, perplexing and confounding. How can one understand a person who refuses to raise his or her own young, and deposits them in some other nest for some other person to love and care for? Is it craziness? Is it callousness? Is it rampant individualisation, free market policy, and economic rationalism at its best?
In order to be happier, we are told to stop seeking after our own fortunes, and allow ourselves to be like those birds, who do not wonder, when night falls, where they will find their sustenance on the morrow. Perhaps the problem was that the plan was too well thought-out, leaving too few variables to chance? That other truism – we get what we need, is always followed implicitly by – we don’t get what we want. I didn’t want my role in this family to just be, just be the breadwinner.
The English word ‘cuckold’ is derived from both of these words – the bird, and the deluded person. The cuckold is conventionally the generous though gullible man who raises the children borne by his spouse; children fathered by someone else. (I discovered the more contemporary usage of the word, which seeks to reclaim the power of the man and reinstate his dominant position over “his” woman, but this piece is neither about sexual objectification, nor gratification.)
So to the Cuckoo’s Nest of My Own Making – I’m unsure what part I play in this. Am I the fly-by-night twofold shouting bird, butting in and putting my eggs where someone else can incubate them? No. Am I the bird who made the nest the cuckoo put its egg into? No eggs! No eggs! Am I the bird who raises the chicks that were laid in the nest I made? Apparently not. Who’s the cuckoo then?
This has been brought on, of course, by the onset of menopause, tragically early in my case, following after the early menopause of my mother and my grandmother. Mine started just as I started finally trying to fall pregnant with the child I had hoped to raise with my partner. I’m the infertile cuckoo – and menopausal women are known to be a bit crazy and out-of-control, at least some of the time.
Best laid plans make best farm eggs and all that – but my ovaries have ceased to make follicles. My fertility has run its course. So my/our plans were laid to an untimely rest.
As well as the grief associated with the shock of diagnosis, the death of my happy dream and my rage at finding that I did wait too long, too long, but for all the right reasons, it’s thrown up in my face questions about family, roles and lifestyle choices that zap me out of my comfort zone and into emotional chaos.
As my Beloved says – most breeding couples need never question the assumptions around roles, allegiance and ownership that pervade every family structure. Our lives as a pair of breeding lesbians are far more complex than many might imagine.
Once it was as simple as – each has a womb, each bears a child, we raise them as siblings, of whom we each are the mothers.
Once it was as simple as – the biological mother will breastfeed, the other will support her through the birthing process and beyond. And then we will swap roles and give the other mother her turn.
Once it was as simple as – the birthing mother stays home with the baby and the other is the breadwinner.
This all seems a mockery, a mockery now.
My long-held happy dream proved itself flexible enough to adapt to a changing set of parameters that moved from defiantly single motherhood, to partnered; from stable public housing, to private mortgage stress; from welfare dependence, to work. My happy dream shattered into pieces that can’t be reassembled. I cannot recognise my place within this cuckoo’s nest of my own making.
Once upon a time my happy dream made economic sense, based on the resources I had at hand – my own resources to generate income, and the resources I knew I could count on, as a citizen of this state. By gaining a partner I lost access to welfare. The road is much tougher on us all, these days.
Once upon a time my happy dream afforded me a lifestyle though poor in monetary terms that would be rich in opportunity. My plans were dignified by my creative inspirations. I would be time rich, if resource poor, which suited my simple living intentions. However, I find myself robbed of time, robbed of time, and struggling to generate any creative ideas in the midst of full-time teaching.
Once upon a time my happy dream was joyously intertwined with my/our involvement and enactment of my cultural heritage and its traditions; I so wanted to bring my children into a home replete with Jewish symbolism and ideas, so they could grow into a Jewish identity that was celebratory, life-affirming, and not divisive. Due to the different faiths that we follow, the identity of our children is cut cleanly in half; two-faced and discursive.
As these elements shuffled off, my happy dream was cut down to the exact size and the exact shape of the cuckoo’s nest I now inhabit. I’m finding it harder and harder to reconcile, let alone to be happy with this situation. I keep saying – I need to find another narrative; this one is no longer viable. It’s hard to keep breathing in an environment that contains only imaginary oxygen. My faith in world creation wears thin, wears thin indeed.
My children – thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for never seen – it’s not true! The one that we created together is no less mine, than hers. This won’t change just because I am unable to bear a sibling.
My understanding of feminism, and my desire to live out some of those feminist ideals to which I relate, wars with those other desires and assumptions that help to make sense of who I am, as a person. I lay claim to all those warts, scars, wrinkles and scabs that lie both on the surface of my skin and deep within.
But then again – who am I, am I? The cuckoo, cuckoo, or the cuckolded? Neither of the two? Is it necessary or helpful to weave my new narrative within this dichotomy? Perhaps not. It may be just my rage, my rage and my endless disappointment that renders this vision with such bitterness.
I so wanted to be the birthing mother, the one whose belly swelled, who felt the baby swimming safely inside her, who brought that new life forth and nursed it. I so wanted to be the homemaker, the home mother, the primary carer, the breastfeeder.
I so wanted my turn to come soon, come soon, and now it will never come at all. I don’t know who I want to be now. I don’t know who I can be now. I don’t want just to settle for the crumbs that are dropped. It’s not fair not fair not fair not fair.
Her children are my children are our children. But what kind of mother will I get to be? There are no glib responses. I’ve hit the rock bottom of this nest. And that’s so hard, so hard.
(*with thanks to William Wordsworth, 1804 To the cuckoo)
© Melina Magdalena (2011)
It isn’t fate, so I am told. This is a world of my own making. I created my circumstances, made my choices and have therefore no reason to rail against them. Instead, let me accept the situation in good faith, realising how much better off I am, than others in this world who, I must assume, equally chose their fates and have therefore no logical reason to deplore their circumstances which are, I admit, so much worse than mine.
The cuckoo famously lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, which raise the young, while the biological young of the cuckoo-raisers are evicted from their parent’s nests to splatter splatter on the ground and die.
This is not quite the scenario I am painting. My own young, raised successfully to adulthood, have just about flown the coop already.
The cuckoo is also a symbol of someone who is foolish, perplexing and confounding. How can one understand a person who refuses to raise his or her own young, and deposits them in some other nest for some other person to love and care for? Is it craziness? Is it callousness? Is it rampant individualisation, free market policy, and economic rationalism at its best?
In order to be happier, we are told to stop seeking after our own fortunes, and allow ourselves to be like those birds, who do not wonder, when night falls, where they will find their sustenance on the morrow. Perhaps the problem was that the plan was too well thought-out, leaving too few variables to chance? That other truism – we get what we need, is always followed implicitly by – we don’t get what we want. I didn’t want my role in this family to just be, just be the breadwinner.
The English word ‘cuckold’ is derived from both of these words – the bird, and the deluded person. The cuckold is conventionally the generous though gullible man who raises the children borne by his spouse; children fathered by someone else. (I discovered the more contemporary usage of the word, which seeks to reclaim the power of the man and reinstate his dominant position over “his” woman, but this piece is neither about sexual objectification, nor gratification.)
So to the Cuckoo’s Nest of My Own Making – I’m unsure what part I play in this. Am I the fly-by-night twofold shouting bird, butting in and putting my eggs where someone else can incubate them? No. Am I the bird who made the nest the cuckoo put its egg into? No eggs! No eggs! Am I the bird who raises the chicks that were laid in the nest I made? Apparently not. Who’s the cuckoo then?
This has been brought on, of course, by the onset of menopause, tragically early in my case, following after the early menopause of my mother and my grandmother. Mine started just as I started finally trying to fall pregnant with the child I had hoped to raise with my partner. I’m the infertile cuckoo – and menopausal women are known to be a bit crazy and out-of-control, at least some of the time.
Best laid plans make best farm eggs and all that – but my ovaries have ceased to make follicles. My fertility has run its course. So my/our plans were laid to an untimely rest.
As well as the grief associated with the shock of diagnosis, the death of my happy dream and my rage at finding that I did wait too long, too long, but for all the right reasons, it’s thrown up in my face questions about family, roles and lifestyle choices that zap me out of my comfort zone and into emotional chaos.
As my Beloved says – most breeding couples need never question the assumptions around roles, allegiance and ownership that pervade every family structure. Our lives as a pair of breeding lesbians are far more complex than many might imagine.
Once it was as simple as – each has a womb, each bears a child, we raise them as siblings, of whom we each are the mothers.
Once it was as simple as – the biological mother will breastfeed, the other will support her through the birthing process and beyond. And then we will swap roles and give the other mother her turn.
Once it was as simple as – the birthing mother stays home with the baby and the other is the breadwinner.
This all seems a mockery, a mockery now.
My long-held happy dream proved itself flexible enough to adapt to a changing set of parameters that moved from defiantly single motherhood, to partnered; from stable public housing, to private mortgage stress; from welfare dependence, to work. My happy dream shattered into pieces that can’t be reassembled. I cannot recognise my place within this cuckoo’s nest of my own making.
Once upon a time my happy dream made economic sense, based on the resources I had at hand – my own resources to generate income, and the resources I knew I could count on, as a citizen of this state. By gaining a partner I lost access to welfare. The road is much tougher on us all, these days.
Once upon a time my happy dream afforded me a lifestyle though poor in monetary terms that would be rich in opportunity. My plans were dignified by my creative inspirations. I would be time rich, if resource poor, which suited my simple living intentions. However, I find myself robbed of time, robbed of time, and struggling to generate any creative ideas in the midst of full-time teaching.
Once upon a time my happy dream was joyously intertwined with my/our involvement and enactment of my cultural heritage and its traditions; I so wanted to bring my children into a home replete with Jewish symbolism and ideas, so they could grow into a Jewish identity that was celebratory, life-affirming, and not divisive. Due to the different faiths that we follow, the identity of our children is cut cleanly in half; two-faced and discursive.
As these elements shuffled off, my happy dream was cut down to the exact size and the exact shape of the cuckoo’s nest I now inhabit. I’m finding it harder and harder to reconcile, let alone to be happy with this situation. I keep saying – I need to find another narrative; this one is no longer viable. It’s hard to keep breathing in an environment that contains only imaginary oxygen. My faith in world creation wears thin, wears thin indeed.
My children – thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for never seen – it’s not true! The one that we created together is no less mine, than hers. This won’t change just because I am unable to bear a sibling.
My understanding of feminism, and my desire to live out some of those feminist ideals to which I relate, wars with those other desires and assumptions that help to make sense of who I am, as a person. I lay claim to all those warts, scars, wrinkles and scabs that lie both on the surface of my skin and deep within.
But then again – who am I, am I? The cuckoo, cuckoo, or the cuckolded? Neither of the two? Is it necessary or helpful to weave my new narrative within this dichotomy? Perhaps not. It may be just my rage, my rage and my endless disappointment that renders this vision with such bitterness.
I so wanted to be the birthing mother, the one whose belly swelled, who felt the baby swimming safely inside her, who brought that new life forth and nursed it. I so wanted to be the homemaker, the home mother, the primary carer, the breastfeeder.
I so wanted my turn to come soon, come soon, and now it will never come at all. I don’t know who I want to be now. I don’t know who I can be now. I don’t want just to settle for the crumbs that are dropped. It’s not fair not fair not fair not fair.
Her children are my children are our children. But what kind of mother will I get to be? There are no glib responses. I’ve hit the rock bottom of this nest. And that’s so hard, so hard.
(*with thanks to William Wordsworth, 1804 To the cuckoo)
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