I suddenly got all inspired and decided to write something. I think I've been needing to write a summation of my feelings about the miscarriage, and what better way to than to use Joanna (I worry it comes across as creepy since I speculate so much about her life). I hope it's okay in Right-on even though it's more about me than Joanna. It's long as shit. If anyone reads it, thank you.
The words of Joanna Newsom have been coloring my life almost as long as motherhood has fascinated me. From my late teens on, I deeply desired to be a mother. I discovered myself to be the type that welled up at the sight of little ones. The desire wavered between unexamined, primal desires, such as coo’ing and smiling at and speaking to every baby in sight and more calculated activities, such as actively making lists of books I’d like to read or suggest to my future children, and long lists of names. My maternal desires were commonly looked down upon by women who claimed that a woman who wanted to be a mother actually had no ambition at all. Joanna Newsom, on the other hand, seemed to be thinking about motherhood just as much as I was; the inherent femininity and womanhood encapsulated in the want, and the act, of becoming a mother.
Of course, I couldn’t actually be a mother, not without means and not without a proper father for the child, so that was that, a future hope that sometimes bubbled into a maniacal present desire that left me yearning for that sort of life inside of me.
When I discovered I was pregnant in June, it was not a planned thing, and not a very happy thing. The shock is something I imagine only comes with a first and unexpected pregnancy: there is something … growing inside of me? It’s so strange to see your life projected in a certain way, to have no responsibilities, no building burdens, and then suddenly to realize that that has all changed. In less than 8 months, I was to be a mother. I kept saying I didn’t feel pregnant, but began building my life around it: those book lists were only getting longer. I surrounded myself with pregnancy and baby books, accepting that though my situation wasn’t ideal, it still was, and I had to deal with it the best I could.
I warmed up easily. I cried, touched by the earthy writings of women describing the empowerment of pregnancy and childbirth, continually checked both my belly for signs of growth and various drawings to see the growth too small for me to see from outside. I began to feel pregnant, a subtle nausea following me around, breasts so sore I could hardly walk without the slight movement hurting. I read pregnancy books and made judgments. I wouldn’t be a worrisome and stressed pregnant woman. I was young and healthy and thinking something could go wrong would only help something go wrong. I also scoffed at books that wrote of ambivalent feelings, addressing the possibility that the woman reading wasn’t absolutely at peace with her newfound motherhood. I made sure that I knew just how at peace I was, how there wasn’t even a hint of unhappiness associated with this pregnancy – that was only fear, at the beginning. I was ready to be a mother, had always wanted to be a mother, and here it was.
But I remember one day in particular, thinking how sad it was to me that, though this was something I didn’t feel I had chosen, I was giving up my youth. I wouldn’t even know the meaning of “careless” anymore. The devotion and responsibility required of me now was more than I’d ever had to manage. The feeling of wanting to be a mother, and actually being pregnant, are two different things. Of course I was happy, in so many ways, satisfied, thrilled with my plans, with my future life and what I was gaining: myself as a mother. But sometimes I found myself so saddened by what I was losing: myself as the self I knew.
There was that identity shift that had to take place, understanding my new role and what was necessary. I took vitamins that made me nauseous, ate breakfast every morning whether I was hungry or not, and put my weight gain at the back of my mind. I started going to sleep earlier and reading out loud – just in case. I talked to the baby at night, touching my stomach, telling her (I always thought it was a her) how loved she was, how excited everyone was at her mere existence, how she was being born into a family that wanted her so badly. My ambivalence faded, and there I was, Priscilla, the mother. As 12 weeks was rolling around, I noticed my nausea fading, and smiled at the prospect of entering the second-trimester.
***
I’ve always thought that many of Joanna Newsom’s songs were abortion-related. It can turn into a rowdy debate among fans, some who think we’re just obsessed with abortion and force it into every image, but I see it in songs like “Only Skin”:
But I took my fishing pole (fearing your fever),
down to the swimming hole, where there grows bitter herb
that blooms but one day a year, by the riverside –
I'd bring it here:
Apply it gently
to the love you've lent me.
---
Press on me:
we are restless things.
Webs of seaweed are swaddling.
You call upon the dusk
of the musk of a squid--
shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib.
Rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes,
I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it!
Smell of a stonefruit being cut and being opened.
Smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking.
With the release of the song “Baby Birch”, it was made obvious: Joanna Newsom was singing about a lost baby in some shape or form:
This is the song for Baby Birch.
I will never know you.
And at the back of what we've done,
there is that knowledge of you.
I thought the song emanated guilt and loss, ending in a climax of violence, referencing a children’s book. It was easily one of my favorites off of her newest album and I listened to it constantly.
The baby name I loved the most was Clementine. So, in the morning, I’d clean the kitchen, staring out the window at the summer sun and singing, “Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine. You were lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine,” thinking what an inappropriate song it was to sing, but not stopping.
***
For months, I had held tickets to my first Joanna Newsom concert. As the date rolled around, I was giddily excited. Outside of motherhood, her music has complemented my life in every way since I first heard it. Her album Ys never faild to send shivers through me; the combination of her oft-hated but much adored voice, the plucking of harp strings, and gorgeous words ripe with emotion. I intended for Clementine to be a Joanna fan, of course, and removed a lyric sheet from Joanna Newsom & The Ys Street Band E.P. so that it could be signed for my baby. I tucked a permanent marker in my purse with it. Though I’d been too shy in the past to make an attempt to meet musicians, I was determined. I needed this for my baby.
I arrived at the Moore Theater just minutes before she was to take stage and stopped at the bathroom. I was greeted with the scariest sight for a pregnant woman: blood. I immediately began shaking, but assessed the situation. My constant reading and advice from doctors told me that small amounts of blood were normal and if not accompanied by cramping were probably harmless. I made my way to my seat.
It was admittedly hard to concentrate at first. I kept wondering if I should do something – call my mother? I paid close attention to my body and felt no pain and so settled into watching her play.
The beautiful Joanna Newsom is a joy to watch play as she moves between piano and harp, her long hair swinging. I didn’t start paying attention fully until the last few songs. Me already swelling with emotion, I cringed when she came out to play the encore: “Baby Birch”.
I heard the song in a whole new way. Only a few weeks before, I had gone to the bookstore and browsed the children’s section. I found the book “Baby Birch” references: The Runaway Bunny. I read through it, imagining reading it to my daughter. It’s about a baby bunny that threatens to run away to various places, and his mother tells him each time that she will simply follow him – a mother would never let her child get away with leaving.
But in “Baby Birch”, it seems, the child does leave. As Joanna sang the final stanza, I ached.
…told her "wherever you go,
little runaway bunny,
I will find you."
And then she ran,
as they're liable to do.
It seemed to me about a baby gone in a way so that it could not be followed. No matter how badly I might want to save my baby, go with her to wherever it was she was going, if she were to be lost, then she would simply be lost.
***
The following morning I went to check on the baby. They attempted to hear a heartbeat. The midwife went from – “You’re slender, and just about 12 weeks, so we should be able to hear it” to, “Well, you can’t always hear the heartbeat at 12 weeks, I wouldn’t worry.” They fit me in for an ultrasound and I sat in the waiting room, alone. I didn’t want anyone to go with me. It seemed like if someone was going with me, I was just asking for bad news. On the ultrasound table, I stared at the dark ceiling, pleading in my mind, “Please, baby, don’t leave me.” As time went on and the technician remained silent, I couldn’t hold back the tears. I begged my baby to just be hard to find – but I knew what a 12-week-old baby looks like. She should have been there, and she wasn’t. The technician sent me back to my midwife without saying a word. It was obvious at that point, but the moment it became real, when I heard, “Your pregnancy stopped developing…” I just broke, sobbing, while the midwife awkwardly touched my knee.
I kept wondering, “What am I going to do?” My life was so wrapped up in the little unborn thing that I had no idea what I was supposed to fill my time with. The loss cut so deep. It felt like my heart was being continuously squeezed as I drove home, mourning and mourning, shocked and confused.
My bedroom was strewn with pregnancy and baby related books and pamphlets. For the next few days, everything I did, I would think, “The last time I did this, I was pregnant.” My mom put away the baby clothes that I had bought, but I put the lyric sheet Joanna Newsom signed up on my wall. She had written, “To the future one!”
I remembered a scene from “Only Skin”, about a bird that is found dead. The narrator intends to take the bird up to her treehouse to remove it from the dogs that are running loose around it. (“…though you die, bird, you will have a fine view.”) As she begins her trek, the bird suddenly comes alive and flies away. But, Joanna sings, that was just a fantasy, and in the real world “dogs still run roughly around little tufts of finch-down.”
I was a mother who had failed to save her child. Everyone tells you not to be guilty, but it’s inevitable. When the baby that you were meant to protect is lost, it feels so strongly that it’s your fault. The franticness to save her was so strong. I read line after line of “misdiagnosed miscarriage” hoping, begging whatever power, whatever god there might be, to please give her back, knowing how pathetic I w s being. I hated living in the world where I’d failed, where there was absolutely nothing to be done, and it had happened, it had occurred: My baby was dead.
***
Some women don’t recover from the emotional toll of a miscarriage for years. I’m luckier than that.
Nothing makes remembering this not hurt. It’s impossible to think of the days of my pregnancy and not cry. But there’s something else there, too: thankfulness, and relief.
Yes, I worried that my ambivalence at the beginning of the pregnancy sent some strange message to suffocate her, that my lack of happiness made her think she wasn’t wanted. I still worry about that. But it’s manifested in a different way. I wasn’t ready to have a baby. I had thought, for so long, that motherhood was my destiny and it would be okay to tackle it as soon as possible. But put in that situation, I resented all that I was losing. If it were my choice, I would choose my baby over any silly life of “freedom” – but I wasn’t given that choice, it was made for me. And I am actually grateful.
I understand the feelings that were present in the past. I don’t want to feel guilty about them. I was scared to be pregnant. I loved my baby, and I made myself ready, but I was scared. And I don’t know why, but I was given another chance, some time to prepare. I had to go through the horrible pain of losing her, but I treasure Clementine for the time she existed and the joy she gave me and what I have learned.
It was only weeks ago that I discovered that Clementia is the Roman goddess of forgiveness (“Of course,” I thought, “clemency!” but I’d never made the connection before) and that surely Clementine was derived from that. It seems important to me that I unknowingly named my baby after something I would later need to do for myself. At this moment in time, I believe the miscarriage was a good thing, and I am forgiven for it. I forgive myself for being so careless as to get pregnant in the first place when I couldn’t handle it, for having feelings of selfishness within the pregnancy, for not being filled with pure joy the entire time, and now, to be relieved that it’s over.
***
I don’t know Joanna Newsom’s personal story. Maybe her songs reference a miscarriage (or something else). I’m unsure how an abortion feels, but I think in some cases (like mine), the feelings might be similar to a miscarriage. Images of violence are not restricted to abortion – I would know, doubled over in pain as my body ridded itself of what was already gone. She writes in “Only Skin” of having her hair cut, and being “the happiest woman among all women.” Later, in “Baby Birch”, her hair (an easy symbol for femininity) is cut again, but this time “a barber [is] cutting and cutting away at my only joy.” She wavers from singing about being happy about a child: “I saw a life, and I called it mine. I saw it, drawn so sweet and fine, and I had begun to fill in all the lines, right down to what we’d name her,” to being less eager: “Hear the goose, cussing at me over her eggs. You poor little cousin. I don’t want your dregs (a little baby fussing all over my legs.)”
No matter what happened in reality, the songs communicate a confusion I understand. There is no lack of sadness regarding the baby lost, but it’s not that simple. It seems like a disgust at herself drips off of some of the lines in “Baby Birch”. But, in my interpretation, it is also true that she won’t allow herself to feel wholly guilty. I know that Clementine wasn’t a person like you or I, but she existed in my mind, and in my body, long enough for me to attribute emotions and feelings to her. I think that Clementine forgives me. It is complicating to be a woman, to have the burden (and gift) of childbearing. For now, I am childless, but people tell me I am still a mother. I’m not sure if I see myself as one. However, I still revel in my womanhood, and sing along as Joanna sings:
Blessing all the birds that died so I could live.
Be a woman, be a woman.
I don’t think Clementine will go away any time soon. She exists in my memory, in the baby blanket I slept with while I was pregnant and in the positive pregnancy test that I just can’t throw away. But when Joanna sings, “Be at peace, baby, and be gone,” I’ll sing too. The signed lyric sheet is still on my wall. Clementine is no longer a future one, but a past one, embedded into my life story – but there will be another baby in the future, and she’ll have songs about her too. I am so excited about my life, open and free; I am a woman, satisfied, relieved and forgiven. My femininity is tied up in every part of me, not just the part that can reproduce, and is not threatened by the losses. I ask for peace, but not for Clementine to go. Her little life reminds me of what was and what could be, but most importantly, what is, and how happy I am to be a young woman, without child.
***
I am reminded of an interview in which Joanna Newsom said the ending to “Only Skin” was fictional. If she didn’t craft that ending, the song would go on forever. I feel similarly here. I cannot end this on a happy note, reveling in my relief, because of the deep sadness I still feel. But to end on a sad note would be misleading because I am so thankful. So I’ll end it with a simple explanation of what this was, who this (both this writing, and my life) is dedicated to, in the vein of Joanna Newsom: This is the song for Clementine, though I will never know you. Thank you for letting me know myself.