AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS IS BORN /

ALY WINDSOR

aFTER MY FIRST CHILD WAS BORN, I became obsessed with death. Witnessing life begin made me think about how and when and where it might end. It made me think of my own beginning and how much closer I am to my ending than my son is to his. I imagined time as a river that we all leap into at the moment of our birth, and swim down in various constellations with our family and friends until, one by one, we wash up alone along its shores. The day my son was born, I loved standing in the river and catching him in my arms, but I also dreaded that terrible, inevitable day downriver when we would be separated.

Everywhere I looked that summer, babies were dying in hot cars. I couldn’t stomach any news about lost, abused, or murdered children. The rage and despair that would follow was too much. What if those things happened to my child? I would die. I was certain. I couldn’t bear life without him—this tiny person I’d known only a few weeks but loved so fiercely. Nor could I bear life with him significantly harmed from something I should have been able to prevent, even if preventing it was impossible.

So I checked and rechecked his car seat every time I parked the car, especially when I didn’t have him with me—because what if he was with me and I had forgotten? Any time he slept elsewhere than on my body, I stopped and laser-focused on his chest from across the room to make sure I could see its gentle, reassuring rise and fall. I tested his bath water higher and higher on my arms just in case my hands were no longer reliable temperature gauges. I eyed my partner suspiciously whenever I had to leave the two of them alone—because what if my partner had a secret violent side, or just wasn’t careful enough? What if this person I chose to be my child’s other parent harmed our son, intentionally or not? I would die. I would die. I would die.

When I imagined motherhood before I had children, I thought of sniffing fuzzy baby heads, holding tiny hands, hearing the sweet slapslapslap of toddler feet on the floor, cheering at soccer games, and maybe even wringing my hands over high school social drama. What I didn’t, and couldn’t imagine was the endless pressure, the constant feeling that I should be in control of all aspects of my child’s development, that he was crying or not sleeping or not eating the right foods because I was failing at my job. Magazines and books and other parents did not help. Depending on who I consulted, I either needed to let him cry or not let him cry; I was either giving my child a sleep disorder or nurturing his attachment at any hour; I was understanding that kids’ eating habits naturally evolve over time or not giving him his best nutritional start. The only unequivocal message was that parenthood wouldn’t be so stressful if I could only get it right. But what exactly constituted “right” was often a matter of vicious debate.

This, combined with my anxiety and the usual social isolation of new American parenthood, put me into a dire state, one that I felt I couldn’t share with others, lest I be judged—or worse, labeled a bad mother. I especially couldn’t bear to risk revealing weakness to people who thought that, as one half of a same-sex couple, I should never have had a child in the first place.

One afternoon, when my son was about three months old, I called my mother, sobbing. I tried to explain how broken down I felt from my perpetual state of vigilance. She struggled to make sense of what I was saying. Her voice rose as she asked, “Are you saying you’re going to hurt your baby?” “No!” I shrieked. “That’s the problem! I don’t want him to be hurt by anyone ever, and I can’t stand the fact that he’s going to be hurt somehow, somewhere, probably again and again, and there’s nothing I can do about it!” Sob. Sob. Sob.

It’s clear now, years downriver, that I was probably suffering from postpartum anxiety disorder, the manic cousin of postpartum depression. As my son got a little older and less fragile, and the wave of hormones within me crested and fell, and I got more sleep and experience, my white-knuckle grip on him eased. I started trusting my partner more. But I still thought endlessly about death, especially my own. Night was the worst. There was a black chasm in my brain, where my existential anxiety lived and multiplied. It yawned wider the longer I ignored it, until there was nowhere to look but straight into its darkness. Suddenly, I’d find myself bewildered by the universe’s enormity and my own infinitesimal existence, and dumbfounded by the knowledge that millions upon millions of people have come before me and millions more will come after. From there, I wondered why I was here at all, and then on to how easily I might never have existed, and how quickly—at any moment—my existence could cease. My stomach roiled and my chest tightened as these thoughts thundered around in my head.

By day, I’d drive around the streets of my city and watch groups of addicts, young and old, dirty and bruised, morph down into babies in my mind, toddling around together on the sidewalks. I knew that many events, forces and circumstances had landed these people—these former babies—on the edge of death. Still, I wanted to know if they’d been cuddled as infants, if anyone had answered them when they cried, worried over their milestones, or sung them to sleep. I wanted them to have been loved, and found it painful to consider that they might not have been. But I also wanted to believe that if only they had good, attentive, informed mothers, they would be somewhere else, healthier and safer.

Meanwhile, it occurred to me that the sooner I had another child, the longer we’d be together in the river of time. Using a less-insane-sounding argument than that, I convinced my partner to embark on creating a sibling for our son when he was only fourteen months old. The first time around, getting me pregnant had taken six inseminations, numerous fertility treatments, and lots of money. You can imagine our shock when we succeeded on the first try. But we were happy, and while a life brewed again inside me, I was mostly able to forget about death.

Forty weeks later, on an early spring night, I pulled my second son into the river myself, surrounded by my partner, our midwife, doula, and nurse. The dim hospital room seemed to spin slowly—with our wet, pink baby at the center—as if time briefly paused its steady flow to whirl around us.

The next morning when I called our two-year-old on the phone, he burst into tears at the sound of my voice. He was sick and couldn’t visit us. Not being able to comfort him nauseated me, but exposing my newborn to strep throat was not an option. My maternal circuits shorted and I melted. This was my first lesson in having to choose which child to protect more, and it stung.

The next few months were full of moments like this. When both children were crying, which was often, I had to decide who needed tending first while the waiting child’s wails flooded the house and my heart banged in my chest. Some days I felt like I barely survived, but the saving grace was that I had no energy left to worry about death.

A year passed. I began a blog as a gift to myself. I found an early-morning editing job I could do from home while my family ate breakfast. I was beginning to feel really alive again as my sons became more independent and I found more time to pursue long-shelved projects.

And then, just after our kids turned one and three, I found several enlarged lymph nodes in my groin and no infection to blame. I careened from doctor’s office to doctor’s office, imagining the worst. Every morning I woke up to a few seconds of peace before I remembered that I might be actively dying. Cold fear sliced through me, from my neck to my toes. My heart hammered, my throat closed. I checked my lymph nodes several times an hour to see if they’d changed. I Googled, and I Googled, and I Googled. When I couldn’t Google anymore, I imagined my partner and kids floating down the river without me. I thought about what I would say in a goodbye video, or whether I should write letters to my boys instead.

These feelings and thoughts didn’t come and go. They were constant, starting in the morning and not relenting until I was asleep again. Tasks that had been tedious before now seemed overwhelming. While my anxiety level remained at a debilitating high, I also experienced panic attacks that rendered me totally nonfunctional. I did my editing work, and afterward, all I could often do was curl up on the couch and cry. It was my partner’s turn to worry about leaving me alone with the children.

The worst, almost unthinkable thought that tortured me was this: I will die before my boys are old enough to remember anything about me, but especially how deeply I love them.

This happens. Mothers of young children die all the time. I know because I read their stories online while I obsessively Googled my symptoms. In addition to the enlarged lymph nodes in my groin, I had a few in my neck, too, plus unexplained abdominal pain, and neck, jaw, and ear pain. I was certain I had lymphoma. My mother, a former nurse, kept telling me that I did not. But I thought, of course she can’t fathom that I might be terminally ill. What mother wants to think about her child washed up on the river bank, while time’s current drags her away?

When I went for my CT scan, I sat in the waiting area, trying not to look at the others who were waiting with me who were visibly sick. I did not want to belong there. When I was called back, I sat waiting again in a dressing room, shivering in my hospital gown, willing back tears. I exhaled loudly without realizing it, until I heard a voice say, “Is this your first time?” I peeked out the door and saw a woman poking her head out from behind a curtain. I could tell that she was bald under her scarf. I said yes, and she told me not to worry, that it wasn’t so bad. Then she smiled at me. That’s when my tear dam broke. I thanked her but felt a rush of fear seeing how ravaged she was followed by a shower of shame that this woman, who was obviously battling advanced disease, had the strength and energy to comfort me—a woman who might not be battling anything but her own demons.

Indeed, after numerous blood tests, an abdominal CT scan, a colonoscopy, ultrasounds, and a head and neck MRI, my doctors concluded that I was not dying. I did, however, have a stage zero melanoma on my upper back that was cured by excision. I had had a clean skin check only three months before, and wouldn’t have had another check for nine months. It’s possible then that my baffling, abrupt descent into manic anxiety—which drove me to scour my body for disease symptoms—actually did save my life. But even after that cancer was found and removed, I felt minimal relief.

During one of my last appointments, I asked my doctor why my lymph nodes were suddenly so reactive when they hadn’t been before. I expected him to list possible reasons or to explain the lymph system, which I already thoroughly understood. Instead, he said, “That may just be one of life’s many unanswerable questions. The older I get, the more comfortable I am with them.”

In that exam room, under that fluorescent glare, surrounded by bizarre, medieval-looking ENT machinery, what this wise, grandfatherly man said was a revelation. My response to unanswerable questions—whether of the health, parenting, or existential variety—had always been to just keep Googling. Getting “comfortable” with the unknown never occurred to me.

I decided to try it, mostly because I didn’t have any other options. I had been to every doctor I could think of and had every test they could order. I had to accept at some point that what they were telling me—which was that I was making myself sick with stress and anxiety—might make more sense than my fear that I had an elusive disease that a whole lot of modern technology had so far failed to pick up on. By continuing to panic about my health problems and the possibility that they could take me away from my children, I was taking myself away from my children, and also perpetuating my health problems.

At times, paradoxically, my fear-riddled brain even suggested death as the only way out of my anxiety spiral. I will die for good one day, yes, but do I want to spend the next year—or forty years—fretting, sweating, Googling, and enacting it before it happens? Or do I want to be here now, feeling my boys’ cool, soft cheeks under my lips, really getting down with them during our family dance breaks, and soaking in whatever other incredible moments I have left with them and my partner and my other loves? The answer to that question is easy. Realizing that I had a choice was the nearly impossible part.

In the middle of my summer of panic, we moved to a neighborhood with winding streets, big yards, and woods on several sides. Our cat went missing not long after. We asked neighbors if they had seen him and discovered that there were coyotes in the area. As weeks passed without our loyal Lenny coming home, we knew that he was probably dead. Our older son asked about him a lot. We told him that we thought he had died. “Why?” he asked, again and again. I tried a variety of explanations. The more I said, the more he asked why. When he asked why anyone had to die, I thought, I am the worst person for you to ask about this. Instead I said, “Well, buddy, I don’t really know.” Somehow, this answer, which made me feel like I was completely failing at an important parental task, made the most sense of all to him.

A year has passed since my medical meltdown began. Time’s river seems to flow faster and faster ever forward. I still struggle with anxiety, but most days I’m able to make the conscious choice to not panic about what’s around the bend, and to take my eyes off of the shores and what, if anything, lies beyond them. Instead, now I direct my nervous energy into becoming the person I want to be—for myself and for the people who are sharing this grand river-ride with me.