Fruitful

Jakob Seissenegger, Portrait of a mother with her eight children, 1565

"Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit." -- John 12:24

This doesn't seem to get easier any way I say it, so: having just turned 43, I'm pregnant with my eighth child, who will be born a week before my second child goes off to college.

I've spent a lot of time over the past week and a half falling to the ground and dying, and staring at the wall, and screaming into a towel in the bathroom so the kids won't hear me. It is an odd quirk of being human that sometimes you are called upon to exemplify what you believe, even when it is not convenient or fun. Hello, I am pro-life and follow the teachings of the Catholic Church about marriage and sexuality, but I didn't think I'd have to be literally open to life again. If this is what the purification of purgatory feels like, this stripping away of every illusion I have about who I am and what I can control, I hope I may go straight to heaven when I die.

I am no longer young, even by the reckoning of the Ancient Houses of Men, and now I know that there are many doors that are closed to me, and I cannot see the doors that will open in the future. 

And so, having donated all my baby clothes and thrown out everything except the changing table, which is still in use after almost twenty years, and having mentally moved into the next phase of life, I find that I'm still fruitful, just not in the ways that I choose. Which is the story of the grain of wheat: it falls to the ground, not of its own will, and cracks open, as everything that grows must do, and the old husk is consumed by fruitfulness. I fear, selfishly, for my old husk. It's not in the greatest shape, after falling to the ground and dying seven times before, but it's the husk I have. I am scared of the ways pregnancy will consume me, ways I may never recover from. 

It is early days, and I am still adjusting, but there is no point in keeping pregnancy a secret when soon I will need all the help I can get. I'm sure I will get it too; the congratulations pouring in have a manic undertone of relief -- thank God it's you and not me. I know; I've been there. 

None of this has to do with Baby, who is already doted upon by the siblings whose most fervent wishes have been granted. Baby is a gift, and is loved, and will, as the kind priest told me while I sobbed in confession, be a great source of joy. I know this. Intellectually, I know and believe all these things, and my life is ordered so that I may live what I believe. But even Jesus prayed that the cup may pass, and sweated blood. It's only human.

Readers of Mrs. Dashwood: I had a premonition that November would be a difficult month for writing, though I had no idea. It seemed an important story to tell at the time; it seems very distant now. Perhaps my mojo will return, and the idea will bear fruit, or perhaps that's part of the husk that will die.