The most wonderful and the strongest things in the world, you know, are just the things which no one can see.
— The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, by Charles Kingsley
My striped blue dress billows up around me and I slosh into the river. I am a hippopotamus. I find a spot that isn’t too rocky, and a branch to hold onto, and I try not to move while Joe takes my picture. There’s a band playing bluegrass music by the water’s edge: cello, banjo, mandolin. A professional-looking crew is filming their cheery plucking. Behind me, a guy floats by in a hot pink inner tube. He hurls himself sideways when his pack of cigarettes falls in, almost capsizing in his attempt to retrieve them. In front of me, a redheaded family squeals, splashes and whines. We wonder what we’re in for. The young father looks over at us, gestures to my belly, to his kids— they’re little monsters, he says, rubbing his head with a tired smile— but it’s great, you know, it’s really great…
Towards the end of my pregnancy, you could often find me like this— plopped in various bodies of water, desperate for relief from the oppressive heat. There was the seaweed-laden lake, which felt more like high season at the Jersey Shore than the relaxing oasis I’d envisioned, and then of course the river behind the apartments. I'd waddle down the concrete hill in my flip-flops, past my neighbor calling out from his porch “any day now, huh!”, down the forty steps, past the signs that tell me to Turn Back Now, consumed by one singular goal: body in river. I’d perch precariously on the rocks, toes in the silky mud, bracing myself against the icy current as it cradled the sharp outline of my belly, my baby swirling beneath the surface in her own primordial lagoon.
Water on water.
If I close my eyes, and stay real still, I can remember when my body was a reservoir. People like to talk about their baby kicking, but mine swam. She glided. Her sudden flips and somersaults led me to believe there was a small, lovely fish in there, exploring her watery landscape, growing strong and brave.
Motherhood is marked by fluid. The fluid she breathes, the blood I shed, the water I gulp to make the milk I spill, the tears she cries, the leakage and the passing and all the rest. If we wanted to get metaphorical about it, we might say that pregnancy is a warm pool, which would make birth an ocean, and postpartum a river, tugging us onward, flailing and mewling.
Some people say water has a memory. They say that water molecules may have the ability to communicate information to one another, that they hold resonances of everything they encounter. “The theory of water memory states that when you dissolve a substance in water, it still has the memory of the substance, no matter how many times you dilute the water afterward.”1 Adult humans are about 60% water, and babies are even more watery— 78% at birth— so, if the theory of water memory were true, I guess that might mean something about us, right?
But it’s hogwash— the theory of water memory. It’s not accepted by the scientific community. After all, it undermines the laws of physical chemistry. They’d have to do a major rework.
Science has been wrong before, though. The theories of heliocentrism and continental drift were initially rejected. Scientists can’t tell us about the majority of the species on Earth— out of an estimated 8.7 million plants and animals, only around 1.2 million have been identified, and most of them are insects. Science still can’t seem to pin down exactly what initiates labor, or tell us why we sleep.
Science can’t explain why, when my sister was seven years old, miles away and staying in a strange new second home, she sobbed into the phone, “I miss you, Mommy. I can feel it in my belly button.”
Draped over my torso in the bath tonight, she nurses. The soft cah sound, and the plip-plip-plip of a leaky faucet reverberate around the dim bathroom. My body pools in low places. Rivulets of milk, fleshy earth, misty remembrance.
If I close my eyes, and stay real still, I can remember the second night, then the third. How I dozed off in this bathtub, my belly a swollen, candlelit island. Then, this same eternal weight, that fluorescent moment, over and over, seared into my flesh.
What else is there to know? Her fluvial cells float and tumble in channels beneath my skin. They lodge like stones in my viscera. A water baby turned land baby, she paws the hollow container of my belly with urgency, making ripples in the water.
Recently:
We made playdough.
This miso white bean “chili” recipe is weirdly addicting and so easy to make. Recipe courtesy of my teacher.
Store your produce on the door of your fridge & condiments in the produce drawer, you won’t regret it.
https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/memory/what-can-water-memory-tell-us/
Berlin. You are amazing.