By Rebecca Smyth
@rebsmyth

It’s 3:30 a.m. on the first morning of September when I learn that I’m a mother.

At some point, I stop sobbing long enough to fall asleep, but I wake shortly after to the excited hum of parents and children walking to school outside my window. It’s the first day back after the summer holidays, and I wonder how they can carry on with their normal lives while mine has just blown up in my teenage face.

Usually, I love September. The fresh start it ushers in—a second New Year of sorts. I love the audacity of each and every hued leaf hanging onto a tree for dear life in the face of dropping temperatures, charging winds, and changing seasons. September has always seemed ripe with promise and generous with courage.

But not this year.

Before I can take it captive, a wild thought crosses my mind: someday I will walk this baby to school. I start bawling all over again, opening the notebook that will become my pregnancy journal and scribbling the only words I can bring myself to write.

How will I do this? How will I do this alone?

And I really like the name ‘Reuben'.

***

A black blob creeps across the wall. I rub the sleep from my eyes and fumble for my glasses at the side of the bed, but the clarity of vision brings no comfort. It is, in fact, the ugliest, fattest spider of all time. It’s so fascinatingly grotesque I almost can’t look away. I race out of the room, grab my husband, Paddy, and place both hands firmly on his shoulders.

“I am not going to scream, but I am probably going to cry if you don’t deal with the massive spider in our bedroom,” I hiss in a firm, even voice, glaring at him so intently, he doesn’t dare break breath.

I busy myself picking up laundry until the deed is done, and he appears in the hallway again, triumphant. He is a gentle giant, never one for violence or aggression of any kind, so I can assume our eight-legged friend now lives in the back garden—but I don’t ask.

I, on the other hand, used to own a special weapon, fondly christened The Spider Mallet by my then three-year-old. The Spider Mallet was reserved for this specific breed of monster—the kind that only graces Northern Irish homes as summer edges toward its end, coming out of their hiding spots for one last humid hurrah in breeding season. But as a young single mother without a mate of my own, empathy was hard to come by.

Now, I look up at my husband whose mouth is curling at the edges, seemingly allowing himself to enjoy my hysteria.

I don’t utter the question hanging on my lips. That question. The one I raised when my second born was thrust onto my chest to the soundtrack of Paddy’s weeping. The one I ask every single time he plays football with Reuben and somehow manages to have the kind of chats I can only dream of from my spectator spot at the kitchen window. It’s the question that comes to mind every time he works late, leaving me at home with the wolves between the hours of 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.

How did I do this without you? How did I ever do this alone?

***

Between you and me, I used to secretly call myself the Patron Saint of Unplanned Pregnancy.

I don’t know how I became that person. Okay, maybe it was the public online blog where, in my way-too-honest fashion, I documented my premature entry into motherhood.

Often other girls would reach out, having just watched the pregnancy test turn positive, desperately seeking some solidarity with someone who had also sat on the bathroom floor post-pee, and thought, What am I going to do?

Some stayed in touch, and some disappeared. Some continued with their pregnancies; some did not. All have a permanent spot in the crevices of my heart.

It happens less these days. You know, since I’m an old married woman with more children, and at the grand age of twenty-eight, it’s socially acceptable to be a mother.

But recently I’ve had the gift of getting to know a young woman who finds herself carrying a baby she did not plan for. Set up by a mutual friend, we are an unusual fit in every other circumstance, and she makes it clear from the first awkward phone call that she wants to know every single gory and glorious detail. Pull no punches, she says.

I’m not sure I want to relive every detail, but there’s a tug in me I can’t ignore. So, over several sweaty August evenings during an uncharacteristic heatwave, I sit in my car—the only soundproof “room” of my home—and I lay it all bare.

Her story is one I’ve heard over and over. She wants to continue with the pregnancy, but her family is less keen. The father doesn’t want to hear from her until she “gets it sorted.”

In one breath, she asks about pain relief in labour, and in the next, she asks if I think an abortion would be less painful. She wants to know what it was like squeezing my studies into naptime, but also if I preferred having a baby when I was older.

As we’ve gotten to know one another, we’ve picked up on the other’s ethical stances and religious beliefs. And yet, it doesn’t matter. In these moments, it never does.

On paper, we are opposites. In person, our stories and opinions and pain and questions are so gray and nuanced and entangled; it’s hard to know where she begins, and I end. No matter what choice she makes or how her future unfolds, we both know she will never be the same—forever changed by that double line, catapulted into motherhood without will or warning.

I want to assure her this is only the beginning, that this baby is the best thing to ever happen to her. I want to declare a village of people will get around her and carry her. And in her darkest, weakest, most desperate moment, the love of Jesus she has always heard everyone banging on about will suddenly become real to her.

But I can’t. I can’t promise she will be given the same story as me. I can only promise it’s possible.

So, I also tell her about the nights I held my son on his bedroom floor, both of us crying until we fell asleep in one another’s arms on the hard, wooden floor beneath us. I tell her about the shadow of depression that seems to have followed me as long as I have followed the call to be a mother. And then, because I can’t quite help myself, and because hope is irresistible, I tell her about taking my son to university with me. And to Paris, London, Rome, and Amsterdam.

“But how did you do it alone?!”

I hear the begging in her voice. She thinks I have a secret formula. Some words of wisdom that will make her brave.

All I know is this: when a baby is handed to me, I am not a married woman or a single woman. I am not a teenager or a geriatric. I am not a statistic or a stereotype. I am a mother. I am just a mother holding her newborn child, like every mother who has gone before. And I swear the world holds its breath to watch every time.

“I don't know how I did it alone, but I did it. And you can too,” I eventually respond, sighing in surrender at my lack of answers.

***

When that first ripe morning of September rolls around again, we are suitably sleep deprived as tradition would have it, and so we argue over breakfast options. The toddler spills water all over the table and Reuben feeds his little brother Weetabix while I make the packed lunch.

It takes twenty-five ridiculous minutes for everyone to locate their shoes and put them on, and when Reuben is fully dressed in his new school uniform, I fix his collar without thinking. It’s been two months, but my hands haven’t forgotten.

Paddy rallies us for photos before rushing to work—the one morning of the year his rule-abiding conscience allows him to be late. On the walk to school, we talk about Minecraft and the parts we remember of Psalm 23. And at the school gate, Reuben doesn’t hang around long, but his tight squeeze is unprompted—a tuft of his wiry hair brushing against my ear.

“I love you. I’m proud of you. I’m praying for you,” I whisper. And then I head straight to TK Maxx to buy a cinnamon-and-something candle to celebrate.

It isn’t until after bedtime that I get a chance to hoke out my now ten-year-old pregnancy journal. I send a photo of the first entry to my new friend. I pray September gives her the courage she needs.

I don’t know how I did it, but I did. And if my worst fear came to fruition and I had to do it again, I know I could. Because I’m a mother. And that’s what we do. Even before that double line appears, a mother is born with a special strength to do what is right in front of her. Mallet or no mallet.

Guest essay written by Rebecca Smyth. Rebecca is a Northern Irish storyteller, wife and unlikely mum of three boys. After becoming a mother at eighteen, at a time of feeling totally lost, she found her words. She says writing is now her way of seeing God in her life and she hopes that maybe, through her stories, you might see him in yours too. She is happiest on a slow Saturday morning with coffee and a bountiful supply of both pastries and boy snuggles. Oh, and a book. Always a book. You can read more of her writing on her Instagram or website.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.