The Mama Sutra

by Anne Cushman

  That night my husband left for a business trip, and I was alone in the house. I felt sad that Sierra’s ashes were all alone in her empty bedroom. I got the jar and brought it to bed with me. I held it in my arms, and kissed the lid, and cried. “I love you,” I said to the jar. I thought: You are truly flipping out. You are a crazy lady, alone in the house, talking to her dead baby’s ashes.

  I got up and carried them out to the living room and set them on the mantle, next to my wedding bouquet of dried roses.

  I walked back in to her empty bedroom and looked around. A thin film of dust had already settled over the floor.

  I am going to turn this into a beautiful meditation room.

  It is all I can do: turn everything that comes into love and awakening. I will be an alchemist, turning loss into awakening and love. I will make her little nursery into a shrine to love, to beauty, to the fragility and beauty of life. I will turn my heart into a beehive, making honey from all those dead flowers.

  * * *

  —

  Three weeks after Sierra died, I did yoga on our patio again. Above my mat, two wren tits were pecking in the birdfeeder hung in the branches of our apple tree. A hummingbird darted in and out of the bottlebrush.

  I made my way slowly through the poses, as if I were walking through an earthquake-damaged house, lovingly assessing the damage. Afterward I lay on my back in Corpse Pose, watching a blue jay spray a shower of seeds to the ground. Looking at the beauty around me, I felt as if I were picnicking on the edge of an abyss into which every now and then someone I loved would silently tumble.

  Lying there, I saw that I had two possible responses to Sierra’s death. One was to contract in terror, to try to cling more closely to what is precious, wrap my hand tight around it, never let it go. An ultimately futile gesture, since it would all inevitably slip away.

  The other response would be to cherish what was precious, breath by breath, with an open hand, knowing it could be snatched away at any moment and that it would ultimately be gone forever. To cherish each moment, knowing that every day is a gift and a blessing, that it may be the last.

  The yogis had it right: The world is impermanent. But the world is also a sacred blessing. To hold both of those truths in our hearts at the same time is the razor’s edge of practice.

  Yes, there is tremendous grief in Sierra’s loss. I will never stop missing her; I will carry her in my heart for the rest of my life.

  But despite all the sorrow, what I have ultimately been left with is a sense of joy, of the precious miracle of incarnation. Of the way love is not bound by time and space. Of how the value of a life has nothing to do with how long it lasts. And of how the rippling effect of one life goes on and on, long after a person is gone. Sierra is not with me in her physical form, and I am so sorry. I miss her deeply. But she is definitely still here.

  She is here in the way her dad and I wrap our arms around each other in the night or the way one of us says “Drive carefully” as the other leaves on an errand. She is with me in the way my heart softens when I see someone suffer. I see her in everything delicate and precious: a baby quail, the broken shell of a snail, a hummingbird flitting through the spray of a garden hose.

  And although I would give back all these lessons in a second to have Sierra with me in physical form again, I see that what she has left is a real and lasting legacy. And ultimately, it’s the only way any of us live on: in the way the world is different for our having been here.

  We did convert Sierra’s nursery into a meditation room. In the corner I hung a mobile of paper cranes made by three of her cousins to commemorate her death. I set up a little altar covered in Indian silk, with the statue of Kuan Yin and an incense burner made from the urn we used to hold her ashes. On the altar, in a white frame painted with morning glories, I placed Sierra’s tiny, delicate footprints: tracks in purple ink on a piece of paper, already starting to fade.

  * * *

  —

  And so, on that bright summer day, we scattered Sierra’s ashes. We carried her little urn down to the base of the waterfall, to the spot where the stream poured into the lake. Her dad reminded me of what one Zen master said when he was asked about reincarnation: “First the stream, then the waterfall, then the stream again.”

  There were wildflowers all around. We sat in the grass with her urn between us and cried as we said goodbye to her, and we told her how sorry we were that she couldn’t stay with us. We told her how beautiful it was in this place, with the flowers and the water and the snow-tipped mountains and the thunderclouds just starting to gather, and a whole forest full of animals so she wouldn’t be lonely.

  The ashes were different than I had thought they would be. I thought they would be gray and gritty, like fireplace sweepings. But they were like a little bag of broken shells, creamy white and pale yellow, with recognizable bits of bone, including a tiny little femur head the size of my fingertip. They rattled against one another when we scooped our hands into the plastic bag. I thought the stream would carry them off right away, but they sank to the bottom and were swept up against a rock. They lay there in a little white heap on the black granite, with the water rushing over them. They were still there when we left.

  Now when I think of Sierra, sometimes I remember her as a squirming, kicking presence in my bulging belly; and sometimes as a beautiful dark-haired baby, lying still in my arms with her eyes closed; and sometimes as a little pile of white bones at the bottom of a stream.

  The night after we scattered her ashes, the Perseid meteor showers came. I stepped out of our cabin into the windy night and looked up—flashes of light coming out of nowhere, streaking across a sky full of stars, and vanishing into the infinite darkness.

  SUTRA 3

  Buddha’s Birthday

  • • • • •

  WE HAD JUST finished watching the latest episode of Survivor, and it was time for the ritual we’d decided to do. I was thirty-nine weeks pregnant with our second baby—one week before my official due date—and my husband and I were going to invite him to be born.

  We were in the downstairs den of the house we’d moved into together just after our wedding, when I was six months pregnant with our first child, Sierra. Now, the remains of dinner were still on the coffee table in front of the TV: greasy plates of salmon bones, potato skins, scraps of heirloom tomatoes. If I’d had things my way, we would have lit candles and amber incense and sat cross-legged on zafus in front of an altar. But my husband said, “You know I’m allergic to rituals. The less formal we make it, the better.” Besides, I’d already dismantled the meditation room so it could be turned back into a nursery, if we were lucky enough to have a baby to rock there.

  So instead we just sat on the couch and put our hands on my belly—once again, round and full and pulsating with life. Thirty-nine weeks. This was exactly how far along I had been when I had discovered that Sierra had died inside me.

  My husband’s palms were warm on my belly. The curve of the baby’s bottom pressed up against my hands.

  “We love you so much, and we’d love for you to come out soon, if you’re ready,” I said to the baby. “You can probably tell that I’m really scared. Don’t worry—you’re doing great. It’s just that we loved your big sister very much too, and we lost her when she was just as old as you are now. So we’re scared that we will lose you too. We just want you to know that if you want to come out and join us, the nest is all ready.”

  My husband leaned closer. “There are incredible things out here,” he said. “Mommy’s breasts, and computer games, and dogs, and movies to watch—you won’t believe how much fun we’re going to have.”

  Then the ritual was over.

  My husband took the garbage cans down to the curb, then sat down at his computer to check his email.

  I lumbered upstairs to finish packing my bag for the hospital. I filled my new toiletry kit with
supplies: travel-sized soap and toothpaste, lip balm, contact lens solution, extra lenses—carefully checking each item off, as if I could guarantee that my baby would live by bringing an adequate supply of dental floss.

  Then I crawled into bed and adjusted my props—two pillows behind me, two between my legs, two under my head, and my arms wrapped around another one like a giant teddy bear.

  * * *

  —

  Every mother has a birth story. The classic myth of the birth of the Buddha—or rather, of the child named Siddhartha who would grow up to become the Buddha—goes like this: There was a beautiful woman named Maya who was the wife of King Suddhodana, the ruler of the Shakya clan of Kapilavastu in a region that now straddles the border between India and Nepal. Maya and King Suddhodana had been married for twenty years without having children. But one night the queen dreamed that a white elephant—a symbol of greatness in ancient India—appeared, circled around her three times, and entered her womb through her right side.

  Queen Maya carried her baby inside her for ten lunar months, and then—as was the custom—set out to return to her mother’s home to give birth. Along the way, she stopped in a grove of sal trees and—delighted by their beauty—decided to give birth there, standing up and holding on to a branch. According to the story, the baby prince emerged from her right side, took seven steps, and proclaimed, “I am the world-honored one.” A few days later, her mission accomplished, Queen Maya died.

  To me, this sounds like the version of the myth told by a man who has never given birth. The male baby is the hero of the story, not the mother who gave him life from her body. The woman is the passive vessel for a man’s awakening journey, not a heroine embarked on her own grueling quest to become fully alive. It’s a story stripped of longing, passion, pain, the mess and tangle of human hearts and human relationships, just as surely as it is stripped of sweat and vaginal juices, of amniotic fluid and blood and tears.

  How might the story have gone if it had been passed down from grandmother to grandchild over the generations, along with the secrets of grinding spices and gathering dung for cooking fires? I imagine a tale that begins something like this:

  Year after year, the king couldn’t quicken the queen’s womb with a baby. So many times she hoped for a child, only to see the blood staining her clothes once again! There were the four who came far too early, just clots of flesh and sorrow to be burned and never spoken of again. And then there was the one who was born perfect, but never cried, whom the king’s physicians weighted with stones and cast to the bottom of the river unburned, as was the custom with saints and lepers.

  Then one year, on a visit home to her mother’s house, the wise midwife who attended all the family births gave the queen four bags of herbs to brew into tea. “Drink this one with the start of each monthly blood,” she told her. “Give this to your husband, mixed in his wine, when the moon is new. Then visit the stables at night, give this one to the charioteer, and lie down with him in the straw. And drink this next one every morning after your first missed blood.”

  Her tea gave her dreams and visions. Her drugged husband fell into a deep sleep, and the charioteer came at her with the ferocity of a wild elephant, his trunk never resting. Her monthly blood stopped, and she began to grow larger.

  Why imagine a fable that begins like this, riddled with disappointment, death, confusion, secrets, lust, lies? Because it says to us all, You too. Out of your broken, screwed-up, incontrovertibly human life—not the imaginary, divinely royal life of your neighbor—something vast and beautiful can be born.

  * * *

  —

  Our doctor had told us that we needed to wait at least three months after Sierra’s birth to start trying to get pregnant. Our midwife, Johanna, told me that it might be quite a bit longer than that before I even started menstruating again.

  But four weeks after Sierra’s delivery, my menstrual cycle started up, with its usual clockwork regularity. Johanna looked baffled when I told her. “This is how your mother had seven children,” she said.

  So two cycles later, as soon as we scattered Sierra’s ashes, we began trying to conceive. I knew it was probably too soon. Our hearts were still ripped into tatters, my body still weak. But I had already been waiting for nine months to hold a baby in my arms. To wait another year seemed impossible. Baby making became my new obsession.

  Last time around, our pregnancy had arrived unplanned, after a carefree, passionate, still-unmarried romp at the beach house where we’d gone for my family reunion. Now, I planned for conception as if organizing the invasion of a small country. Planning gave me something to do so I didn’t feel so helpless and victimized. I wanted Sierra back. But since I couldn’t have her, I wanted a replacement, and I wanted it now. At thirty-six, I was terrified that I would not be able to get pregnant again. (“I’m so sorry about your loss,” an acquaintance said to me tearfully, holding my hands, when she ran into me at an event. And then, in the next breath, “And how old are you?”)

  So I read every baby-making book I could get my hands on, all bearing cheery, determined titles such as Taking Charge of Your Fertility. I xeroxed multiple copies of a fertility chart and began recording my vital signs—cervical fluid, cervical position, basal body temperature—with the precision of a NASA scientist planning a moon launch.

  I compulsively surfed the web, visiting sites with names such as “What Are My Odds of Getting Pregnant?” (Answer: 1 in 4, in any given cycle, if I am having sex an average of three times per week; 1 in 2.7, if I have sex each of the four fertile days preceding ovulation; 1 in 3.6, if I have sex just once, two to three days before ovulation; slightly increased if I have an orgasm within 45 seconds of my partner’s ejaculation; 1 in 10, if I am over thirty-five, no matter how often or in what position I have sex.)

  I haunted newsgroups that used acronyms like BD (Baby Dance) for having sex and DH (Designated Hitter) for the person that you are BD’ing with. I bookmarked web pages comparing the sensitivity of various ovulation predictor kits and home pregnancy tests; detailing the appropriate levels of hCg (the “pregnancy hormone”) at various dpo (days past ovulation); selling fertility-enhancing herbs and visualization tapes; giving advice on “keeping BD fun” (well, stop calling it BD, for one thing).

  My life revolved around the thickness and quality of my cervical mucus. On the Trying to Conceive discussion board, there were tips: Use actual egg whites to supplement the cervical mucus. Take vitamin A. Dose yourself with evening primrose oil.

  I did it all—as if, by checking every box, I would be able to bring Sierra back.

  As the DH, my husband was on duty at ovulation time and for several days before, producing sperm. His job also required him to be romantic and tender, so that the night that our new baby was conceived would be both sacred and sexy.

  So, predictably, we argued. We argued about when to make love, and how, and whether he was being romantic enough, and whether he had rubbed my back long enough before unhooking my bra. The fights always ended with me crying and him checking his email. But then we had to have sex anyway, because I couldn’t bear to miss a night of egg-white cervical mucus.

  In the back of my mind, the ghost of my yogini self begged me to relax. Surrender to spirit, she whispered. Wait for the child who is meant to be yours, who is waiting to incarnate.

  But I was in no mood to hear her. Trusting, opening, surrounding, flowing—look where that had gotten me! I wanted the foolproof methods of science. Natural conception seemed shockingly archaic, random, and uncontrolled. Just plant some seeds and wait for them to sprout? There must be a better method than that!

  My husband was doing research into cloning for his budding biotech company, and I found myself wishing that we had saved Sierra’s cord blood. Maybe someday we could replace her, exactly.

  But would it be her? Or a dim copy? Sierra was more than her genes. She was our bright hopes and our passion
. She was our innocence. She was the sand in the sheets as we kissed. She was us dancing at our wedding, my burgundy wedding dress swirling over my round belly. She was us moving into our first house.

  There was no replacing her.

  When the first month passed without conception, I was crushed. I began doing a headstand next to my bed immediately after we made love, to help the sperm on their journey.

  My husband lay silent, watching, worried.

  * * *

  —

  Nine months before our spontaneous ritual in front of the TV, my husband had scheduled a business trip to Texas A&M to meet with scientists about a research project.

  I looked at the calendar. “That’s exactly when I’m going to be ovulating. You can’t go then.”

  “Well, why don’t you come with me?”

  So, a week later, I flew to Texas. We checked into a hotel overlooking the stone walls of the Alamo.

  “You know what our slogan will be if this is where we conceive?” I asked him, laughing. “Remember the Alamo!”

  The pregnancy test stick displayed its pink plus sign three days before my husband’s birthday. I managed to hold in the news until his birthday morning, when I told him I wanted a video of me giving him his birthday present. I trained the camera on him and handed him a card: Happy birthday, Daddy! I can’t wait to meet you! Love, Bean.

  He put down the card and started to cry and laugh at the same time. “When you got the camera out, I didn’t know what you were going to give me. I thought maybe it would be a puppy.”

  * * *

  —

  We all want guarantees, in our life, in our practice, that everything is going to work out. We want to guard our hearts and say I will only love if my heart will not be broken.