The Quarry

Several weeks ago our little family took a trip up to Vermont to visit some old friends.  The night before we left I called to confirm our arrival and to make plans for how we would pass the weekend together.

“I don’t want to take Grace to the quarry,”  I told my friend, referring to an old limestone quarry that is now filled with spring water and is a most amazingly clear and cool–and deep– swimming hole. 

“No worries,” my friend said. “Only Elastigirl can take her babies to the quarry without worrying,”  Liz said. 

I couldn’t have agreed more, and I was grateful for her understanding.  There was just something so frightening about having my child around such deep water.  All I could imagine is that she would fall in, and I wouldn’t be able to get a hold of her. 

So the quarry was out.  We swam at a waterfall, and lounged on the deck, and Grace had a wonderful time playing on the bunk-beds with the “big girl.”  But then Saturday afternoon rolled around and it was hot and people were itching for a swim.  They wanted to go to the quarry. 

“No quarry,” I said.  “Not with Grace.”

And there was lots of discussion and dismissing of my maternal overprotectiveness and jokes about the generally manic nature of pregnant women.  Then there was a car that left for the quarry and a car that left for a fair rumored to be serving free ice cream.  Needless to say, Grace and I were in the free ice cream car.  But, as I was not driving the free ice cream car, it also, somehow, ended up at the quarry “just for a few minutes.” 

I was furious.  Nauseous, hot, hormonal, exhausted, and furious. 

Everyone jumped in the water and I sat with Gracie on the grass, wondering how it was I had ended up here.  And by here, I don’t mean just the Quarry.  I mean here in this place of worrying, of protecting, of sitting on the grass in my clothes while everyone else was swimming.  Because the truth is, there are few things in life I love more than swimming in cold, deep water.  Few sensations leave me feeling more hopeful and alive than that first plunge.  Chris has a favorite picture of me taken at this very quarry– I am wearing a blue bikini and am mid-leap off a high rock ledge, just a few feet above the water.  I can still remember what it felt like to hit its surface, and to fall deeper and deeper with the momentum of the jump. 

But sitting there on the grass I was not that woman in the blue bikini.  I was a mother who hates having her child so close to this water, this water in which children three times Gracie’s age were swimming in life vests.  This water in which no children Grace’s age were swimming.  This water that just goes down and down and down.  I was also a pregnant woman, and already I was feeling the weight of this next baby, already I felt a reluctant certitude that I belong on the shore, watching, feeding, protecting.  Whatever self I have regained since Grace has gotten older already seemed lost to this next child, and I felt unsettled by my impulse to sit back and stand guard. 

Because sitting there on the grass, angry and worried, I was the woman in the blue bikini.  I wanted to be in the water.  The dissonance was enormous–  I wanted nothing more than to leave; I wanted nothing more than to be in the water.  Grace also wanted to be in the water, and so I slowly helped her get undressed and into her swimming suit and her swim vest so that she could sit on a very slippery rock (on which I was certain she would hit her head, go unconscious, and slide out of my hands and into the water). 

She sat on the rock with Chris, and I sat next to them for a moment, dipping my feet into the water.  Oh, how I wanted to get in!  Oh, how I hated being there!  But then I realized that I couldn’t leave, I couldn’t save this afternoon, I couldnt’t forgive people for bringing us here against my wishes, I couldn’t return to some semblance of a sane self, without getting in the water.  So I left Grace and Chris there on that rock, and I went back to the car and changed into my swimming suit. 

And then I jumped into the water.

If this were an essay for a magazine, right about here I’d need to say something about how with that jump I resolved these two parts of myself, how in that instant the woman in the blue bikini (now wearing a polka-dot maternity tankini) and the fierce mother became one.  But I didn’t.  And they didn’t.  All I can say is that I swam glorious laps in that perfect water, back and forth between those high stone walls, and while I did I gave thanks for the strength of my urge to jump, for the reprieve it gave me from worry and anger and vigilance.  When I got out of the water I felt like every cell in my body had been rinsed clean. 

I have been thinking about that trip to the quarry quite a bit as this pregnancy progresses, as I grow bigger and the due date gets sooner.  I think before this baby comes I might try giving up all together on attempting to resolve my conflicting selves. I worry that resolution might just take too long, and it seems to me that in the trying, in the waiting, the mother self can win out too often.  Maybe it’s better to keep putting myself in the path of experiences and sensations I have always loved, that have always made me happy, and to stay there for as long as it takes for my urge to enjoy them–no matter what–is simply too much to resist.