The Wrong Way to Save Your Life

by Megan Stielstra

  Shhhhhhhh—listen.

  Wind: that night, gentle. Waves: that night, calm. The city sounds far away behind us. My feet sunk in sand, sand between my toes, sand kicked up and flying as Mojo shot toward the water, so much energy kept under lock in our tiny condo with its crying baby and his crying mother—shhhhhhhh. A stripe of light ran from the edge of the water to the moon. A path, I thought. Away from all of this and up into the sky.

  * * *

  I found Mojo on Petfinder, an online service connecting adoptable animals with their human families, like Match.com but without the algorithms and gross creepy dudes. Are you in the market for a dog? A cat? A ferret, a pig, a Burmese python? This is the place.

  “Christopher, look at this dog,” I said. Christopher was my boyfriend. We’d just returned to Chicago after a year in Prague, me teaching in an American study abroad program, him designing websites for an American advertising company. Dogs were everywhere in Prague: the bridge, the metro, Kavarna Meduza where I wrote every day. Even the server had a dog who came with him to work, a sleek black lab, impeccably trained. “What can I get you?” he’d ask in Czech, his dog sitting next to him, still as stone. I’d order—coffee or wine, depending on the hour—and he’d walk behind the bar, his dog following right behind, and return with my drink, dog at his heels. I wanted that dog. I wanted a dog. I wanted our dog, and so, like many recently shacked-up couples, we decided to adopt a puppy. “We’ll name him Egon,” I said, thinking of the Schiele Art Centrum in Cesky Krumlov. But that seemed unbearably pretentious so I switched the reference to Harold Ramis, aka Spengler in Ghostbusters. After a little research, we found out that an animal from overseas meant months in quarantine after returning to the States, so we agreed to wait. For the rest of the year I walked around singing, “Doe—Ray—Egon!” like the Ghostbusters do when they turn on their proton packs.*

  We’d been back in Chicago for a week when I started casing Petfinder, even though the timing was impossible. It was February, another awful winter. We were working too much; me still teaching, Christopher still in design. We had to make money; I picked up weekend shifts at the brunch place where I’d worked in college. We had to find an apartment; my friend Jeff let us crash with him but it was too tight for three. We had to kick the culture shock; a single trip to an American grocery store proved panic inducing. There were so many products, so many options. Do you know how many brands of cereal there are in the United States? It’s too much cereal. Who the hell needs that much cereal cereal cereal cereal.

  A puppy needed time we didn’t have. We’d wait—the summer, maybe, when everything was, if not easier, at least sunnier.

  But here’s the thing: There’s never a right time to have a dog. To have a child if you so choose. To fall in love or write a book or perform a poem or put your heart on the goddamn table. I’ll go to the next open mic, we say. And: Next month I’ll sign up for a class. And: I’ll quit my job later. Doesn’t matter that I’m miserable, I have to wait for the lateral move or the substantive raise or the fully funded position and hey, how’s that going for you?

  You wake up one day and there it is. You say yes or you say no.

  “Christopher, look at this dog.”

  His name was Mojo. They weren’t sure what kind he was, but for sure part pit. He was six weeks old and so adorable I thought I’d die. Red brown, with nine black toenails and one white one, on his right front paw. Christopher downloaded his picture. He photoshopped a text bubble over his little puppy head. It said: will you be my mommy?

  * * *

  I am not proud of what happened next so I’ll say it fast: When I got to the shelter the next morning there was a little girl, eight years old, maybe. She pointed at Mojo and squealed, saying, “Daddy, look at that puppy! Can I have that puppy?”

  “That’s my dog,” I said, and I shoved her out of the way.

  * * *

  Dog people are obnoxious. We only talk about our dogs. If you met me around the time I adopted Mojo, here’s what I would’ve told you:

  Me: Mojo is afraid of stairs! Mojo ate a lightbulb! Mojo smells like toast! Mojo was the valedictorian of his dog training class because he’s totally the smartest or maybe because we carried hot dogs in our pockets or maybe because the other dogs in the class were super expensive pedigreed inbred purebreds, Weimaraners and puggles and something called a doodle who, his owner informed us, was descended from kings. And Mojo and I looked at each other like: The fuck is this guy? while the doodle pooped on his own food. Every morning we go on walks in Humboldt Park, and we pass all these dogs, and always, about eight feet apart, their owners and I wind our leashes around our wrists. “It’s okay,” I call out. “He’s friendly!” “So’s he,” they call back, and we relax our grips, and our dogs sniff each other with waggy tails.

  It’s got me thinking: Wouldn’t it be great if it could go like that with people? You get to a certain distance and call out: “It’s okay! I’m friendly!” or “Steer clear, I’m an asshole!” or “no motherfucker i did not hurt myself on my fall from heaven.”

  One time—I’d been in London for a conference so I was crazy jet-lagged and Christopher had been up all night at the Puerto Rican People’s Parade, i.e. the best party in the city, point being we were exhausted, sleeping like bricks—and we wake up to Mojo peeing all over the bedroom ’cause we’d forgot to take him outside. we are the worst—and also the power was out for some reason I can’t remember. Anyway, Christopher’s trying to find a flashlight and he reaches into the Box of Random Stuff and accidentally grabs a food processor blade so now he’s bleeding like a faucet and we go to the emergency room for stitches and Christopher is, uhm, not so great with blood and passes out on the gurney and the nurse asks me for his social security number. Show of hands: who’s memorized their partner’s social security number? I didn’t know my own social security number, not till two years later when we bought a condo and signed a thousand documents and then another thousand later when we lost the condo, but regardless, the nurse was all sorts of snippy that I didn’t know his information. “What are you to him?” she asked. I thought I’d black out from the rage: first at her, then at the American health care system, then at systems in general. I thought of my gay and lesbian friends who deal regularly with such bullshit as they try to take care of their loved ones. I thought of all the women I know who have been talked down to by medical professionals, made to feel stupid and small, like we don’t know our own bodies. Also: Christopher had lost a lot of blood and I was terrified. Also: it was 2:00 a.m. and the fluorescent lights were terrible. Also: I was mad at the English language for limiting personal relationships to words easily understood by this nurse and her forms and their establishment, words like “boyfriend” and “spouse” when clearly there were levels in between like we have a dog together and while I was swimming in all that whatthefuck Christopher sat up on the gurney, white as a ghost, and said, “She’s my domestic partner!” before passing right back out.

  I knew then I was going to marry him.

  I was covered in blood. I was covered in urine.

  And fuck, I loved this man.

  * * *

  Fear is a learned response, so we taught the puppy not to be afraid. The Internet gave us a helpful and, uhm, thorough checklist of the people, places, and things to introduce to your dog prior to twelve weeks of age including children, escalators, men with beards, women in hats, and chickens. I lugged him around Chicago, checking off boxes. I like checking boxes. I like visible achievement: step by step, bird by bird. We went to the farmer’s market. We went to the Wilson Skate Park. We drove in circles around O’Hare. Most everything on the list was easy to find: sirens, bicycles, people in helmets. I had the hardest time with carpet, of all things. Everyone we knew had hardwood: rickety, knotty, potential tetanus trap hardwood, yes, but hardwood nonetheless. Now, I would be able to ask on social media: Who has carpet? Can my dog stand on it for a sec? But this was the spring of 2005, a year after the launch of Faceb
ook but a good two or three before we signed our lives away. (I think Facebook is Skynet. Take me with a grain of salt.) My bright idea: take the puppy to Empire Carpet! I’d watched the commercials for years (if you’ve never lived in the Chicagoland area, they play like hourly). Finally, a reason to go! I looked it up in the yellow pages and was surprised to discover there was no actual physical location; instead, someone is sent to your house with samples. I imagined the Empire Carpet Man showing up at my front door with squares of loop pile, cut pile, berber, and shag. Naturally, he’d bring The Fabulous 40s, the a cappella group that recorded the famous Empire Carpet jingle. Sing it with me, Chicago: “Five-eight-eight, two-three hundred, Empire!” They’d stand in my living room singing: “Up on the Roof,” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” and, my favorite, “Please.”*

  Instead of taking Mojo to Empire Carpet, I took him to another legendary Chicago institution: Affordable Furniture & Carpet! Just Say Charge It! EZ Credit! in Wicker Park. I set him down on a geometric area rug, he padded it with his tiny paws, and I checked “carpet” off the list, crumpled now at the bottom of my bag. We walked back out to Milwaukee Avenue and into a massive oncoming crowd, which I soon found out was a funeral processional honoring the death of Pope John Paul II. Traffic had been cleared and the street was packed, people walking calmly, serenely, some holding red-and-white flags, some holding portraits, some holding kids, holding hands, arm in arm, all quiet and singing softly. They kept coming, more and more and more. Later I read that an estimated ten thousand people were out that day, mostly Polish Americans from all over the Chicago area mourning the loss of the first Polish pope with a five-mile walk up Milwaukee from one prominent church to another.

  I put Mojo down and we stepped into the wave northwest. At first, I did it to check boxes—puppy in a crowd, puppy in a parade—but within minutes it was something else entirely. Disclosure: my heart’s not in organized religion. I grew up Methodist, Sunday mornings trying to sit still in the wooden pews and, afterward, cake on the lawn. I went to youth group every week in the church basement, but I can’t tell you what was said. Something about being good. I remember we went camping in the summers near a river. There was a rope tied to a tree and we’d swing over the water like the Mountain Dew commercial, and later, sing around a bonfire. I remember how the music felt. I liked flipping through hymnals and joining in song, even if I didn’t understand the lyrics. I liked the idea of bowing our heads together in prayer and maybe the force of our collective energy could cure sickness or slay dragons or move a mountain. I believe in things like that. Noah built the ark. The statue of Mary cries real tears. Gregor Samsa turned into a bug. A very old man with enormous wings made a leper’s sores sprout sunflowers.

  We could all use a little magic.

  Where I get tripped up is when it’s used to legislate. I dated a Young Republican for a hot second in college, a guy who called himself a Christian. He thought our country’s problem was big government. I couldn’t imagine a bigger government than one that would force me to have a child. We tried to understand each other, see eye to eye, but it never went well.

  One night he yelled, “I don’t want Congress in my wallet!”

  “I don’t want Congress in my vagina!” I yelled back.

  The air went out of the room. He stepped away from me slowly, as if I were a bomb. Was it the meaning of what I’d said that offended him? The fact that I raised my voice? That I used the word “vagina”? I think of him sometimes, like when that high school biology teacher was investigated for saying vagina in a class on the reproductive system, or when Michigan state representative Lisa Brown was told she’d violated decorum for saying vagina while discussing a bill on abortion regulations.

  I wonder: where did he end up?

  Please not the House. Please not the Senate. Please not anywhere that allows him to dictate policy over other people’s bodies and other people’s lives.

  You know the last thing he said to me?

  He said, “God help you.”

  Politics and religion tangle in my head in ways I can’t see past, but on that day, that walk, all those people together in their prayer and their grief and their love—I got it. It felt like the storytelling workshops I ran in my friend Amanda’s living room, a whole room feeling the same feeling. Recently I asked a friend, a woman very involved with her church, why it meant so much to her. She talked about the importance of community, of service, of giving back to this wild, beautiful world. I identified fiercely: what she found in church was what I’d found in art.

  “But that isn’t God,” I said. “That’s people.”

  And she said, “Same thing.”

  * * *

  A few months after we eloped, Christopher and I bought a condo on Chicago’s North Side.

  On Sundays Christopher would grab coffee from the Starbucks on the corner, and if the weather was nice we’d sit in the sand. We talked about scary stuff—mortgage, bills, insurance. We talked about dream stuff—the book I wanted to write, the blog he wanted to build, the kid we wanted to have, and then, two years later, the kid we were having. Dogs kicked up sand around us. We stood in the water and threw tennis balls for Mojo. Children asked if they could pet him. I felt my own child kick and flip. Picture the time-passing montage from every movie ever: me on the beach, my stomach barely visible; me raking leaves, my stomach a soccer ball; me in a blizzard, my body its own planet.

  * * *

  New mothers are amazing. We’re high as kites! If you met me around the time I had a baby, here’s what I would’ve told you:

  Me: The baby is cold! The baby is hot! The baby is hungry! The baby wants to fly! He doesn’t like the book we’re reading! He doesn’t like his blanket! Somebody told me to get a Boppy and I wasn’t sure what that was but the Internet told me and I went to Target and he had a meltdown in the checkout line and the woman behind me rolled her eyes. I try to be patient. Really I do, but hi there, excuse me, do you think you want him to stop crying more than I want him to stop crying? And hi there, excuse me, if you can’t deal with children, don’t shop where diapers are sold. And hi there, excuse me, I’m hanging on by a thread, I’m fragile as fuck, there are hormones coming out of my nose. Do you really want to take on a mother?

  One night I saw a mother pushing a stroller outside after midnight and I was like: That baby should be in bed. It’s cold. It’s late. What is that woman doing? And then, a week after my son was born, my husband was in a car accident, nothing too bad but still. He called from the emergency room, he needed the insurance card, they were putting him in a cast, he couldn’t drive. I got the baby into the snowsuit and the wrap thing and of course we couldn’t take a cab—no car seat—so we got on the L downtown to the Loop, two o’clock in the morning, in February. I thought about that mother with her stroller at midnight and felt near blind with shame.

  How dare I judge her.

  How dare I.

  There’s a great essay about this by Aubrey Hirsch. She says judging another mother is like critiquing a woman being eaten by wolves. “That’s not what I want to do,” Hirch writes. “I want to say ‘Hey, Mama! You looked like a badass bitch taking on those wolves!’ and ‘Aren’t those wolves crazy?!’ and ‘Tell me how you’re surviving these wolf attacks.’” That’s the kind of mother I’d like to be: generous, empathetic, open to the new.

  Yesterday I was listening to that Sleater-Kinney song, the one that goes “My baby loves me/ I’m so happy.” I’d listened to it a ton before, but this time I was like: Wait. What baby are we talking about? Baby like my lover or baby like my baby? I hear music differently now. I read books differently, seeing through the eyes of being a parent as opposed to having been parented. Same with film, art, theater. There’s a whole new level of inquiry, new ways to consider love and life and language, and—I’m not quite sure how to explain this, so stick with me for a second—it ups the ante. I have something now that’s sacred. I want to be better for him: better mom, better writer, better human being
on this planet. I want the world to be better, too. I believe that art has a place in that.

  So what am I going to do about it?

  What am I going to make?

  * * *

  Here are some things I would not have told you:

  I’m scared.

  Something is wrong.

  It’s not all in my head.

  Please, I’m so scared.

  Sometimes I can’t get off the floor.

  I need help.

  I need help.

  I need help.

  * * *

  I am reading about postpartum depression. I want to understand what happened to me. Books describe hormonal changes, sleep deprivation, and the fear of parenthood—all true for me and, I’d wager, others, too: birth moms and dads and adoptive parents, queer and straight, cis and trans, one-, two-, and three-parent households, and the intersections of class and race and ability. From there, our stories diverge based on individual circumstances and beliefs. To assume that everyone’s experience of birth and family and illness looks the same as your experience of birth and family and illness is bat shit at best and, at worst, dangerous as all hell.