by Callie R. Feyen
It is 2004, and I am in a pizzeria in Washington, DC, with my husband, Jesse. I’m wearing black heels, a black tank top, and a pair of J.Crew jeans. These jeans are the best jeans I’ve ever owned. They sit on my hips perfectly, and I never have to pull them up or shift when I stand. They look spectacular with heels or flip-flops. They’re my playful jeans, my brave jeans, my comfy jeans.
This restaurant is notoriously loud because it’s small, but this is a family restaurant. I don’t mind the noise. Actually, I swoon over it—the moms and dads spooning jarred baby food into the mouths of cherub babes as they kick happily.
“Do you think we’ll do stuff like this when we have kids?” I ask Jesse, eyeing the families surrounding us.
“Eat pizza?” he says, putting another slice on my plate.
“You know, stroll to the neighborhood joint with our babies in tow.”
“How many are we having?” Jesse says, mid-chew.
“I could have a lot,” I say. “I think we could adopt too.” I pour more wine into our glasses. “I mean, I teach middle school. How hard can motherhood be?”
More than ten years later, I’m at that same restaurant with Jesse; our two girls, Hadley and Harper; my brother and sister-in-law; their two kids, Mabel and Gus; and two more friends—girls in their early twenties. The place is still loud, and the volume makes us consider whether we should wait the forty-five minutes to be seated.
My brother, whose two-year-old is climbing all over his six-foot frame of a body, suggests we order and eat at their hotel. My sister-in-law, who holds Gus while he roots up and down her arm, thinks that’s a good idea. I look at Hadley and Harper. They’re nodding enthusiastically at their uncle’s suggestion.
We order, and Jesse offers to wait for the pizzas so the younger kiddos can go home. Hadley and Harper stay with us, as do the two college girls.
One of them pulls out her phone and shows my girls this app that zombifies their faces. Hadley and Harper love it. She hands them her phone (a rookie move, I think) and stands. “I could totally be a mom,” she says.
We are standing inches away from where Jesse and I shared a pizza while I declared I could “totally” have lots of kids plus adopt because “I’m a middle school teacher, so how hard can it be?” I wince at the words I said years ago.
“Look,” she continues, “I’m even wearing mom jeans. I totally look like a mom.”
I look at my jeans. The college girl is wearing better jeans than I am. Acknowledging this and her hopeful confidence in becoming a mother makes me think of those J.Crew jeans and the girl who used to wear them.
The jeans came with me when I had to get a D&C because the baby I thought I was carrying was no longer. I folded them neatly and slid them in the plastic bag a nurse handed me when I walked into the hospital. “You’ll get it all back when it’s over,” she said. Not all of it, I thought, standing in my bare feet and a surgical gown.
I would get pregnant again, and it would be a while before I’d wear the jeans, though I slipped them on and found they fit rather nicely the afternoon of Hadley’s first birthday. That afternoon I’d been struggling to get her down for a nap.
My plan had been to take a shower during her nap, then bake Hadley’s first birthday cake. Instead, we went to a bookstore and split a cinnamon scone. Hadley fell asleep in the stroller, so I bought a book and sat on a bench outside, reading while she slept. I crossed a leg and played with the hem of my jeans, happy to have a piece of my past on me the day my blue-eyed baby turned one.
Another time, the jeans came with me to the ER. Jesse and I were up all night with Harper, who’d just turned one, and had some sort of monster fever. And then she didn’t. Within minutes, Harper’s temperature went from the hundreds to below ninety. She was sitting on the bed between Jesse and me, and then she bowed forward, her head slamming into the mattress. Jesse scooped her up and took her to the ER.
I sat at our kitchen table, waiting for the phone to ring. When it did, and Jesse told me they were prepping Harper for a spinal tap, I grabbed Hadley from the crib and ran out the door. I was already wearing the jeans.
They say mothers can tell the difference in their children’s cries: hungry versus tired and all that. I never could. Walking into the ER, though, Harper’s cry is all I heard. I heard it above the sirens on the ambulances pulling in. I heard it above the TVs. I heard it above the receptionist requiring I check in.
She was on her back when I saw her, lying on a hospital bed. I rolled a chair so I could get closer to her, and my jeans (which were like Kleenex at the knees) ripped.
“Uh-oh, Mama,” Harper said. She’d just learned to say Mama a few days ago.
“Uh-oh,” I said back, nervously twiddling the hanging thread from the hole in my jeans.
Harper pointed to my knees. I grabbed her finger, and the thread broke free.
“Uh-oh,” we said together over and over, like a psalm, holding a remnant of what was once whole.
I’m not sure that whole is the name of the game in motherhood. Motherhood means giving life, letting that life grow and be and become. When I bought my jeans, they had no label. They weren’t skinnies, or boyfriend, date-night, or flare jeans. There were no expectations, and that was the magic: I could be whatever I wanted to be in them, and they’d go with me. They were the mother of all jeans.
The last time I remember wearing them was on our eleventh anniversary. I’d made pot roast and a baguette. Jesse came home with cupcakes and champagne. When the girls had gone to bed, he handed me a present: a subscription to Writer’s Digest, a notebook, and a pack of pens. “For all your stories,” he said, then pulled out a pamphlet for a course called “Writing Motherhood” at a local writing center.
“It’s on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m.,” I said, giving the pamphlet back to him. “I can’t do this.”
“We’ll get a babysitter,” he said. He handed the pamphlet back to me. “You are always a mother. You are not only a mother.”
The jeans stopped working after that. I think the button at the waist fell off, or maybe the hem ripped. I can’t remember, but I’ve never had a pair like those jeans since. It’s hard to find something that shows off all the complexities of who we are. It takes more than clothing.
Recently, I was in Hadley’s classroom for a book club. “Do you have a favorite part?” I asked. “How about a part that confused you?” I watched Hadley carefully because I didn’t want to embarrass her, but Hadley had a huge smile on her face.
“Mama,” she whispered, “Tell them what you do! Tell them what you are!”
I didn’t know what to say, but Hadley answered for me.
“My mom’s a writer!” She exclaimed, her eyes wide. “She’s a teacher too!”
“And I’m your mom,” I said, ruffling her hair.
“Well, yeah,” Hadley said, rolling her eyes. “They know that.”
The pizza is here, so we turn and walk toward the door. I take another look at the table Jesse and I sat at more than a decade ago, and remember what I said and all that has passed. I take another look at the jeans of the college girl who’s holding Harper’s hand as they walk outside. I think she’s right: she can totally be a mom. And she’s wearing the perfect jeans.