MY FIRSTBORN

Blooming Redbuds

I have a vivid memory of blooming redbuds all around me from that 9^th of May, 2000. Harbingers of spring, these flowers are very soft; their pink petals have a mauve glow. Redbud trees become about thirty feet tall; so many butterflies come to these flowers! My path was covered with blooming redbuds when Ananya was born. 

Ananya has the same birthday as the Nobel Laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore. I do not have any God. Tagore is my God. As Ananya was also born on Pochishe Boishakh (9^th May), I thought I did not need any heaven either. I forgot all the pain from my C-section. Morphine felt like Absinthe. They gave me a small paper with the newborn’s footprint in the hospital. My heart has been engraved with those little footprints ever since! Tears, blood, sorrow – nothing can erase these etchings from a mother’s heart.

 “With bells of joy

The sun rises in my heart

Your birth anniversary

Is an invitation to eternal birth.”

He Nuton, by Rabindranath Tagore, translated by Anandamayee Majumdar

Ananya’s foot print

My twenty-year-old hospital meal card

I have heard that robins lay their first eggs on the blue-green Blue Spruce tree. The blue of the sky and the green of the leaves create a perfect camouflage: nobody but the mother knows where the eggs are laid. I was careful with my first child in the same way too. I gazed at the baby for a long time and I felt as if I were the first mother. I would feel love quivering inside me and knew that from that day forward, life would never be the same. Ananya changed my life from one that was filled with gloomy ambivalence. 

Here in the USA, they sell Gerber baby food in tiny, adorable glass jars. As a mother raising her first child, I thought that readymade jar food was not good for babies. I started steaming and pureeing organic apples, carrots, and pears just minutes before feeding Ananya. I believed all the nutrients would go away if I froze it or kept it on the kitchen counter for too long. When I went to visit my sister, Shyama, in Portland, I packed apples and carrots into my suitcase, thinking ‘what if there is a delay in going to the grocery store?’ I took my own knives and a vegetable peeler too! What if their knives and peelers were harboring dangerous germs? My sister, Shyama, is ever forgiving and she wasn’t offended by any of my madness.

One day I got a phone call at four in the morning from England. Startled, I jumped up from my bed and went to take the call. I was exhausted from being woken every two hours by the sound of Ananya’s crying. What is the matter now? Well, America alone did not have enough supplies to fulfil the buying urges of a new mother. So, I needed to order a bowl from England. These Tommee Tippee cups were really nice. They were typically cherry-red colored cups, but the moment you poured hot puree into it, they turned yellow. Babies would not burn their lips that way. Well, not only my kids, but my cups have stories too! These cups have coveted places in the memory box.

When Ananya was nine months old, I took the baby to India. We went to Asansol to visit my in-laws. Asansol is famous for its hot-charcoal days – figuratively and metaphorically. If I kept the cup on the kitchen table, it remained yellow from the heat, never turning red. What should I do now? Well, as a mother I was always full of wise, groundbreaking ideas. I put the cup into the refrigerator before feeding the baby, waiting for it to turn red. I then brought it outside and filled it with apple puree, and the cup became yellow! I then waited for it to finally turn red again so I could safely feed Ananya. Mesmerizing, these labyrinth steps! Step by step.

As a baby, Ananya was very accident-prone. I remember when Ananya’s head got stuck in our staircase railing. My mom was with us at that time, and she started screaming, ‘Chop off the staircase! Chop off the staircase! We do not need it!’

Another time, Ananya had to get few stiches on the forehead after diving into fireplace bricks in our living room. My friends told me, ‘Oh, don’t worry. Harry Potter looks exactly like this.” I became so sad! My perfect baby’s body had now been blemished!  

But to tell you the truth, Ananya was a much calmer baby than what I was. I have heard from my grandmother that when I was two years old, I tried to ride down the staircase of a four-story building in my tri-cycle. Well, we had to run to the emergency room after I tumbled down. We did not have the concept of baby gates back then in Bangladesh I suppose. All my aunts, uncles, and grandparents were my baby gates!

I remember once, I opened up a turmeric packet and the yellow powders went straight into my mouth, eyes, and nose. Run, run, and run again to the hospital. My grandma said it seems the doctor thought I had only survived because it was turmeric. If it had been hot pepper, I would have become blind.

As a child, I was testing out various avenues to catch my parents’ attention. These stunts seemed to me to be those of a celebrity! As you can imagine, my dreams were not realized- my chances of becoming somebody important as a child were next to none!

Just after birth, they measured Ananya’s Apgar score in the Meriter hospital. The Apgar score tells the new born’s heart-rate, breathing, muscle tone, skin coloration and so on. Ananya’s Apgar score was nine. At that time an Apgar score of nine was much more valuable to me than a child being admitted into Cornell or Princeton. But I did not realize my Ananya would become twenty years old soon, leaving those Apgar scores far behind to face the various hurdles of life.

Now, it seems that I will not be able to change anything anyways. Sometimes, it seems as if my time is running out- I cannot stay in this world to protect my dearest first-born forever! However helpless I feel, this is the truth.

Well, because I am the mother, I get very restless if Ananya receives even the smallest scratch. You have all seen the mother bird, right? I become worried just like that. If only I could bubble-wrap my Ananya up in soft cotton!

Ananya has become an atheist like me. So, I cannot leave Ananya in the care of God either.

 “Ananya,

Let the light of your own heart dazzle you. Become a conqueror of what is inside of you and outside. You will rule the shadows.”

~Mom”