My name is Wendy, and I have enough children to open an orphanage.
Nineteen years ago, my mother celebrated her birthday with a shrieking, just barely sentient ball of slimy excrement with a disproportionately heavy head and perineal lacerations. She tells me it was the best day of her life. I tell her to cut the bullshit, because the day I tear my vagina is the day I hit rock bottom. She laughs, head thrown back, eyes sparkling. Wendy, you were the best gift I could’ve ever asked for.
My mother is an extraordinary woman. She is unapologetically brash, loud, and demanding. Her smile lines carve through her complexion like a river, fast and ruthless. Her dark, coarse hair is chopped short for efficiency. The buttons on her blouse have watched me take my first steps, have my first period, and open my college acceptance letter. They are fastened securely by an expert hand with brightly colored thread that never matches the fabric. .
I ask my mother about childbirth at least once a month. What was it like? How long did it take? You couldn’t eat anything? For HOW LONG? Did you really have to be naked under your hospital gown? Like, fully naked? Was it painful?
Was it painful?
Every time she answers this, she looks me in the eyes and smiles. Yes, she replies, clear and concise. But her voice is always soft at the edges, filled with a strange fondness, as if my question pressed the start button to a sentimental highlight reel.
The last question was always the most important. Physical pain evokes trepidation. It makes us uneasy, agitated, and anxious. It is something people take every precaution to avoid. We armor our bodies against the probability of broken flesh, bones, or blood vessels. We board up our minds with argument, not allowing even a whisper of criticism to breathe through the cracks. We stonewall our hearts before someone else can break them. Pain is fear, because we fear pain. The two are mutually inclusive.
And so I imagine growing up to be a bit like screaming labor pains. As I sit in the basement of the hatcher stacks writing this, mouth full of the sour aftertaste taste of dining hall chai and enough running through my mind to power a renewable energy plant, I occasionally think of my mom, my friends, my assignments, my projects, and my future. I also occasionally think about getting hit by a stray meteor.
But I also think about how I would not be here right now, enjoying complex residual flavors and typing on my dirty keyboard, if I hadn’t sprained my wrist at a concert last weekend. Or eaten shit on the corner of South University and Forest on a particularly icy afternoon. Or sat on my dirty apartment carpet and cried until I was shriveled and hoarse.
I look back on these moments, moments I had to bring a shaky hand to my lips, feeding myself like a bird whose wings had been clipped, moments where I thought the earth’s crust would open beneath my feet and swallow me into its fiery core, dispelling my body into a billion pieces of ash. I look back on these moments where I thought the world was ending like a sentimental highlight reel, and that is when I began to understand. Pain is fear, but fear is also pain. The two are mutually inclusive.
In class I had the opportunity to learn about Hegel’s theory of history, in which he argues that we must progress through various stages in order to realize human nature. We cannot simply “skip” to the end of history, because each stage contains the past in some way, shape, or form. Just as how we have written an ongoing story of humankind, we can apply this to our own autobiographies. We cannot truly live unless we feel everything that presents itself to us. Pain is the most memorable feeling, and we must feel to remember, to remember to live with vibrancy, with purpose. We live because of the pain we have endured. To fear is to forget.
I don’t credit my philosophy of life exclusively to Hegel (RIP), God, or anyone. I give credit to the experiences which have shaped me, battered me, healed me, and then spit me back into the world, sometimes forgiving and sometimes not. I reminisce each painful moment with a motherly fondness, and I treasure each tear shed as if it were my own child.
Wendy's Cherry Farm 