This is part 2 of the Living Prophetically Series, a collection of ruminations on experimental living. Here is part 1.
I wake up to a warm, white cheesy liquid flowing from the baby’s mouth, onto my nightgown. As I maneuver out of bed, hoping to pass the baby to my partner, who is in the other room, I realize her diaper needs to be changed. I open the diaper. I am surprised by the dark mustard-seedy liquid. When did this happen? I can’t smell the dirty diaper, because the cheesy smell is so strong. It looks like the mustard seeds are glued to her cheeks and are not coming off with the baby wipes. I carry her to the bathroom sink. I am still wearing the spit-up night dress.
It’s 5:07 am.
As I run the water in the faucet, the baby pees in my arms, with her eyes closed. I’m impressed. Now I’ve hit every bodily fluid in 5 minutes: there’s pee on my left side, a little bit of poop on my right hand and spit up that has soaked through the dress onto my legs.
I had forgotten all of this.
I wipe down the counter with my left hand, wash her bottom and apply baby soap to get the spit-up smell out of her face, and finally dry her in a towel. She screams through all of it. I wash only 1 hand since I’m holding the baby in the towel with the other. There’s sanitizer somewhere. Then I diaper and dress her quickly since the AC is running full blast, and I can’t find the remote. The cries get louder until my husband appears at the bedroom door.
“What can I do?” He asks.
“Here.” I pass him our child, as I change into clean-ish clothes. By cleanish I mean clothes with dried-up spit-up. “Can you take her for a little bit?” I smile, because he likes when I smile. I try to find the humor.
The little “bit” turns out to be less than 5 minutes because we can’t get her to quiet down until she feeds. So she’s back to me, nursing until she gently closes her eyes. My husband looks like he hasn’t slept, so I don’t ask him to make a bottle. He needs to know the plan like the day before so he can be ready to feed her and I lack the planning foresight to prompt him the night before. Sleep deprivation over multiple days hinders my communication.
As the mother, I am the source of the spit-up and also the source of serenity for the child.
The infant knows no one else and depends on no one else. I find the paradox of being cosmically alone and tethered to my infant amusing. I mostly have to turn off my brain and pay attention to the body—my body and her body—as this is our only language for the next few years.
During the family retreat this week, my biggest takeaway is that mothering and caregiving are praiseworthy acts of service.
Mothering is my act of service.
The systems of modern society do not reward full-time caregiving. Instead, women of childbearing age are prompted to constantly pursue and advance their careers. The siren call of work might be subtle — from our mothers, society, spouses, or even from ourselves. I’ve never considered where my obsession with career/paid work comes from except it has shown up in many of my essays. I’ve declined every invitation “to help out,” to volunteer or serve on a board or a committee. (I did it once because my friend was the board chair and another committee member said he’d make me flan).
Mothering is a profound job. There is no one to outsource this job to.
To do mothering well is a lifelong practice. No amount of zeros on a paycheck will be enough to undo poor parenting.
I appreciate how much my mother did as a working mother only after I became a working mother.
Nothing I do as her child can compensate my mother for all she has sacrificed for me. In the Islamic framework, I must honor her rights. She has a right to my time and so I spend time with her. The English language is woefully inadequate for expressing this kind of love relationship. There are a million moments like the scene above in which my mother put my needs above her own needs. I see the pattern of her caring for me over herself repeatedly. When I wake up in the middle of the night to nurse, she is there to walk the baby. When I want to go out, she insists I get some fresh air while she cares for the baby. Every dish I like to eat, she cooks. Whatever I ask for, she gives. When I run out of clean clothes that have no spit-up, she hands me new things to wear. There is no concept of “self” for my mother.
The work of being a mother is grueling, thankless, and quite demanding from an objective standpoint. Not all (men or) women are built to handle the endless to-do list that comes with raising a family. And if people are not tested with children, that seems like it frees them to do other kinds of service.
The other side of the family equation is important too. My spouse is a source of comfort as well. His contributions to the household are essential to our family’s economic, spiritual and social well-being.
When we remove the secular prism through which we look at rights and responsibilities, the framing of roles for mother and father is quite different in the Muslim context. In fact, the identity of the family depends on the father. He is not the checkbook or “breadwinner.” The soul of the family relies on the mother. She is not the bread-maker. Each contributes something unique.
Taking care of responsibility is a sacred act in the Islamic worldview. The only entity that cares if a tired, sleepless mother fulfills the rights to her children or spouse, is God. The only entity that cares if a husband fulfills his rights to his wife is God. Without this premise, I’m not sure how people do it in the secular sense. Maybe she can fake liking it for a while. To rely only on motivation or the self is misguided. Long-term, the pleasure of an eternal reward definitely works for my temperament. There is no short-term utility that can justify having and raising children.
In the stories of the prophets, you have brothers trying to kill each other (Cain + Abel); lying to their father (Joseph); straight up disobedience (Noah + Can’an). Mary (AS) says, “I wish I had died” during childbirth. The Prophet Muhammad (S) buried his sons during his lifetime. Regardless, the divinely guided individuals in these stories care for their children and try to do the best they can with zero guarantees, even with God on their side. If the prophets experienced this kind of hardship, then I think we can say that all parents are in the same forsaken boat.
The retreat helped me to reimagine what a healthy family dynamic looked like. Before the retreat, I assumed it was like different units of a business getting the work done but somewhat in isolation. It’s like finance does not talk to R&D unless they are paired in an icebreaker at a staff retreat. “His turn, my turn” is the best way to describe the mantra within my home. I was constantly keeping score of the household chores.
But what about the collective enterprise of raising a family? Why do people want children anyway? The health and spiritual well-being of the entire unit depends on our cohesive teamwork and shared vision. Even if there were no kids (as was our relationship for 10 years), my spouse and I are a family unit, collectively responsible for different dimensions of our home.
So the next time I have the trifecta of piss, vomit, and poop on me, I can remember that my labor is worthwhile.
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