This week’s piece from Dispatches from New Motherhood takes us into the most intimate of spaces – the bedroom at night-time. In THE PENDULUM, Aslı Tatlıadım writes of her rituals with her baby son with great tenderness and lyricism.
‘Sleep is a big theme for parents,’ says Aslı, ‘and it took me a very long time to sleep train my son. Sleep deprivation and lack of personal time made me discover my capacity for patience and love. Ten months into motherhood, I found it as frustrating as magical. When I was writing this story, I felt this juxtaposition very strongly and was inspired by the extremities of my feelings.’
Aslı beautifully captures the magic of this time of day, as well as the reality – and the emotional complexities that are never far away in new motherhood. Here, for your reading pleasure, is THE PENDULUM.
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The Pendulum
Aslı Tatlıadım
I added up the hours I've spent trying to get you to sleep, and so far it is 19 days of my life. Most nights, you lie down close next to me, a small little thing. But you fill the whole bed. Your rapid heart beats with your hot and sweet breath falling and rising. I lie on my side and offer you a raw nipple to suck on, hoping you will eventually drift off to sleep. You hold my swollen breast on either side with both of your miniature hands and pull it to yourself. Your big eyes wide open, sometimes you mumble. Sometimes, you join along with my lullabies, your mouth full, your muffled voice continuous, humming your clumsy rendition of my native songs. 'Söyle güzeller şahına. Yüz süreydim dergahına…'*
Your body constantly moves, feet kicking, torso turning. One of your hands begins to wander, twirling my hair, poking my nose, holding my lips, scratching my eyelids, all the while you suckle. Maybe in 40 long minutes your brain starts to quieten, your body becomes warmer in peace, your movements slower in pace. Our loft room seems hazier now, drowsier, darker. Your sounds soften, your eyelids begin a slow dance of up and down, up and down. '…Zehir olan kadehine. Doldur beni dodur beni…'** I sing the same folksongs over and over again. Waiting to descend into the final hours of my evening, to finally take a break from motherhood.
At times, I am the mother the world has anticipated, watching your angelic face with immense patience and an overflowing wholesome affection that’s fit for the big screen. As I watch the rise and fall of your chest I feel a heat and shine inside my own. At times, my gargantuan love for you swaddles all of my inner selves. But other times, when you have cried all day long, when I have not slept because you have not slept for weeks on end, when I have not had a silent moment alone, when I remember that before you I too was a person with direction, desires, dreams, I become impatient. I thought it was only an intense love affair that could make me feel like this: thirsty, hungry, frustrated, exhausted but wanting more and more and more. As I wait for you to fall asleep, the pendulum swings between the extremities of my motherhood. Your infinite need of me defines both ends. I feel suffocated and satisfied. I feel pained and peaceful. I feel alone and alive. I feel I must get away from you to see myself clearly once again and yet I feel no one, no power, can peel you off from my embrace except for yourself, when you are ready. It is to this tempo, and with this beat, every night I watch you fall asleep.
*Tell the Shah of beauty. I would like to appear in his court.
**Pour me into his poisoned cup. Pour me, pour me.
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The Pendulum by Aslı Tatlıadım appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.