Rebellion

Visiting the Sea

Country of Truth

Atticus sat in my lap calmly watching the dog,

his warm little self such a gift to hold,

his breath coming and going;

how I could feel his interest in the dog

in his rapt attention and small movements.

Why Emily Dickinson (Part 3)

I have a tendency to not look at things.

During the C-section I looked away from the screen that showed me what was happening below my waist, behind the curtain. It was too bizarre. Something on a TV screen at eye level was happening to me, and I couldn't feel it due to anesthesia. It was a three-times-removed sensation of a birth that I couldn't actively participate in, couldn't feel, and could only watch on a TV screen. So I didn't watch. I waited for it to be over, for the nurses and doctor to tell me that Atticus hadn't made it.

If I'd known the outcome I would have felt differently, and would have participated in a different way. But at this point I was all vehicle, a shopping cart in a grocery store, with items being placed on the check-out counter for final transaction.

There was a well-meaning anesthesiologist at my end, going on about how wonderful a c-section was. I was grateful for his presence, but wished he could have been silent. This was so far from what I'd wanted. I'd never felt this utter and complete sense of helplessness and dismay.

I'd followed Atticus's progress on ultrasounds and in books that gave week-by-week updates on his development. But my experience of having a person growing inside me made it hard to imagine him being really like a person yet. I didn't know how Atticus could come out whole. It felt like he should still be a part of me. I couldn't picture what they would remove from the strange hole.

This process could only be assisted by medical professionals, and I felt safe in their hands. I knew I had done all I could to bring Atticus here in one piece, and for whatever reason it hadn't worked. I couldn't deliver him. So all I had to do was lay back and they would get him out.

Emily Dickinson, in her poems, is acutely attuned to her emotional reaction to the world. Part of her ability to do this comes from the way she explores her own mind. She's so familiar with her thoughts she can catalog the presence of new and old:

A thought went up my mind to-day

That I have had before,

But did not finish,--some ways back,

I could not fix the year,

Nor where it went, nor why it came

The second time to me,

Nor definitely what it was,

Have I the art to say.

(from Selected Poems XLVI)

And she has so explored the contours of her own mind that she forms a structure out of it, with physical dimensions:

It dropped so low in my regard

I hear it hit the ground,

And go to pieces on the stones

At bottom of my mind;

(Selected Poems CXVIII)

So her mind has both a stone floor, and in the first poem, something like a flag-pole that a thought can rise on.

When difficult events befall, I am often more interested in living in some corner of my mind, as if there's a TV that's more interesting there than the one with my surgery on it. I live in this corner and watch it as if it will tell me what to do next.

I think this is the place in my mind from which poems happen. In trying to write about Atticus's birth and the NICU, it feels like stepping into a different space in which these memories are contained.

* * *

Entering the Room

Turn the handle. Inside it's bigger than you thought.

Sounds close in: beeping monitors,

sinks spraying. Babies are there.

Some of them are crying. You are downstairs,

you have yet to be in this room but your son

has come, watch them bring him

in a plastic bag to hold his warmth,

the ventilator white and round over his mouth.

Other parents gawk at the newcomer.

He comes out of the bag, they clean him,

settle him into the incubator

black velvet to protect his eyes,

a wire taped to each limb. Under the bent lamp

he slowly begins to wave the crooked branches

of his body like coral in the ocean.

Your husband comes in, gowned, upright,

fresh from the OR. When the tiny hand

closes around his pinkie you're still downstairs,

they rolled you to the place where people wake up.

Upstairs they explain handwashing, visiting,

how long this all might last.

December thirteenth. Your son's first night

never gets dark. The city sings to itself outside the window.

Downstairs you are yourself still

and also you are the one who birthed.

The cut where your son came out

is now a glued-together split.

You're trying to hold your arms and legs in place.

In the morning at shift change your son

sleeps behind the covers of his plastic house.

They have already drawn a little blood.

He's official: he has a clipboard and a team.

Here you come, in a wheelchair

to meet him, the first time

you've seen him outside yourself.

You know him & don't know him.

He's in the wrong place, red-raw

separated & unprepared for this.

You will watch him suffer,

you will carry him away

on a cold bright day in March,

blessed that he lived.

Having lived yourself

so close to his death for days

you will never quite close that door.

Why Emily Dickinson (Part 2)

A month or two after we brought Atticus home I realized all my mental escapes were gone.

There was no time to watch movies or read books for hours; there was precious little room for visits with friends. I'd quit playing bass at church a year ago when Atticus first went into the hospital.

The external input in my life had dwindled. I was going to work, coming home and taking care of Atticus, and going to work again. The lack of other spaces and people pressed in on me.

This is when I really turned to Emily Dickinson. I wanted to think about someone else's life and hers, the little I knew about it, was fascinating. I wanted to insert myself into it and look around. So I invented a new character in her story, a child that could shadow the great poet, to help me open up a door and look inside.

This idea still has an appeal to me. But after reading even a little of Robert Sewall's biography "The Life of Emily Dickinson," it seems like a waste of a chance to explore and re-imagine her actual, documented life. 

What strikes me often is how fascinating she is to so many people. A quick scan of the literature explaining Emily Dickinson at the college where I work gives me almost two shelves worth of biographies, criticism and interpretation. 

What is known about Emily Dickinson is based on poems that were found after her death, letters she's written to others, and personal accounts from documents of people who knew her. This would be like reconstructing your life from emails and texts you'd written to others, emails or texts which they'd kept because they liked you, or still happened to have them after they discovered you were famous. 

So it's basically an educated guess at what the people were really like, what moved their hearts, and what drove them to make the decisions they made.

Why Emily Dickinson?

What I used to know about Emily Dickinson was just the few things you pick up from surrounding culture. This was enough to create a character, a sort of doll with a few accessories.

As a kid, I never liked her poems even though I wanted to, badly. My best friend's mom had given me a book of them with great expectations. Because I was shy and sensitive and wrote poems, she said I reminded her of Emily Dickinson. 

So when I read the poems and hated them, I felt like I double-failed.

This impression lasted a long time. It was particularly strong during periods of social frustration, or when I wasn't writing squat.

But slowly it changed. The concise perfection of a line would come back to me at times.

What really got me was a book at a yard sale. A West Asheville couple had a collection of books on a table, and I was drawn to a worn copy, a small selection of her poems with an introduction by Billy Collins. The introduction was so compelling I couldn't put it down.

He gave me a key to seeing Dickinson's work differently. He took phrases and put them into a context I could understand. After reading this introduction, I felt pumped. I could do this. I could totally read Emily Dickinson and get something out of it.

I flipped to a page halfway through. There were four poems on two pages, each a tiny, compact puzzle. And I didn't get a single one. Not just "wasn't moved" or "uninspired." I really didn't know what her metaphor was referring to, or what the images were intended to communicate.

When I got home I re-read the intro. I vowed to keep trying, and when I wasn't getting it, to just enjoy the images and keep going.

Emily & Phoebe Dickinson: the Storm

(poem by Emily Dickinson)