Bitter Water

Tomorrow I will be celebrating a bitter sweet Mother's Day.  The day marks the 10th anniversary of the birth of my baby boys, Raymond Lawrence and Alexander Varney.  They were born 14 weeks early and only survived for a handful of days.  For several years I was unable to speak about what happened to my boys, for several more I was unwilling, and now I find myself unsure.  


Now that ten years are gone, I have gained a lot:   a son, a loving and fulfilling relationship, perspective.  I still feel the pain of losing my boys, sometimes keenly, but I believe now that I can tell their brief story -and the impact they have had on me - in a way that will be both honest and meaningful.  

The first five pieces in this blog are pieces that I wrote for myself at various points over the past ten years.  I'm not sure if they're worth sharing, but the time feels right.

When I was a child, I wanted my name to be Priscilla.  It was the prettiest, frilliest, most princessy name I could think of.  I longed to be beautiful, graceful, lithe and charming.  I dreamt, as so many girls do, of finding a long lost family that just happened to be the royalty of some obscure European country.  It was a name befitting a ballerina, dressed head to toe in white, sparkling, and breathtakingly beautiful.   Priscilla, I thought, embodied all that I wanted to be.  

Instead, I was saddled with Mary.  Short, plain, sturdy Mary.  It suited me so much better than I was willing to admit, and for that reason, I hated it.  So short!  Only four letters.  I was jealous of my friends Constantine, Deanna, Crystal.  A good name should have at least six letters!  Mine fell woefully short.  The subject of countless nursery rhymes and verses, my name was shared by no fewer than four elderly members of our church with their puffy white hair and layers upon layers of powdery wrinkles.  In my mind, Mary was a name for well behaved, boring little girls with no personality and even less intelligence.  I had no interest in being a Mary, and the name afforded no appealing nicknames.  My mother spiced it up by calling me Mary Pumpakins, but that’s not the kind of name one can use in a classroom, like Isabella became Bella and Anthony became Tony.  The best my family and friends could come up with was Mare…just as short as and even uglier than the original.    

Then there came the day our class researched the meanings of our names.  Boys and girls huddled quietly around their books, searching intently for themselves.  One by one, they shouted or laughed at the pleasure of seeing themselves in a book, at uncovering the treasure of their name.  Peter told us his meant reliable.  Deanna bragged that she was divine.  Tracy loved that the feminine name that earned him so many taunts actually meant fierce.  Tony was praiseworthy, Bianca - shining bright.  The girls were beautiful and angelic.  The boys were strong and aggressive.  It seemed to me that they all had wonderful names with wonderful connotations.  All of them but me.  Mary means bitter water.  I didn’t laugh or shout when I found mine.  I didn’t offer it up to share, but eventually people asked.  “Bitter.”  I said.  “Oh.”  They replied.  And that was the end.  No laughing or wrestling or oohhing or ahhing.  “Bitter” is not the kind of thing to engender envy from the girls or admiration from the boys.  It was strange, difficult for the ten-year-old mind to grasp, and forgettable.  

Over the years I found variations – sea of bitterness, goddess of the sea.  The last one I particularly liked – it mentioned water, but nothing of bitterness.  I claimed goddess of the sea as the meaning of my name for years.  It suited my image of myself.  

 I didn’t much think of the meaning of my name over the years. 

Over the course of high school and college, my name stopped being Mary and became Mary Varney.  My last name became my middle name – inseparable from my first.  I didn’t need to be Mary Varney; there were no other Marys in my circle of friends.  I think people liked the way it sounded.  I know I liked the way it looked – the capital M and V evenly balanced by the tails in the ys.  It sort of rhymed.  It had nice rhythm.  It just…worked.  

I had other names, too.  Mary Mo, because there was a song with Mary Mo in it.  My favorite might just be Mother Mary, because I nurtured my friends.  The girls talked to me about boy problems.  The boys came to me with girl problems.  I was privy to almost every crush, break up, and cheating scandal before all the participants were.  I was the one who patiently answered calls about homework assignments, cheered on her friends at cross-country meets, agreed to wear a sequined dress and sing in the cabaret despite having no real talent for singing or wearing sequins.  I loaned pencils and pens and car keys with equal ease.  I took care of everyone.  I was the kind of girl who college boys felt perfectly comfortable talking to.  “I want,” said one particularly attractive fellow, “to marry a girl just like Mary.”  They opened up to me because I was gentle and kind and caring.  I did not laugh at their fears or tease them later about what they’d confessed.  I accepted them.  They liked that.  I liked it.  It was just my nature.

Eventually, I married, and became mother to a beautiful little girl.  Mothering an infant was much more difficult than mothering young adults with a propensity for drama, and it challenged me in a way I didn’t expect.  After all, motherhood was in my nature.  How hard could it be?  Pretty damn hard, it turned out.  No amount of patient listening or loaned car keys would induce this baby girl to nurse.  I couldn’t rock my baby at 3am from the phone.  Motherhood became real, immediate, and exhausting.  But somehow, we muddled through.  The baby grew into a bright, happy child, and I forgot enough about the sleepless nights and sore body to think about having more children.  

Fast forward to May of 2005.  Twin boys were born, four months too early.  They were critically ill, and their chances of survival very slim.  I held hands with a stranger, the hospital chaplain, as she prayed for my boys whom, she said, had been “baptized in the waters” of my womb.  Holding their little bodies, I inhaled the sharp, bitter scent of amniotic fluid.  They’d been out of my body for such a short time they still carried the smell of me.  

I wonder if the mother of God received her name because of its meaning.  Did early Christians, knowing the meaning of the name, assign the Virgin Mother a name synonymous with birthing and tears?  Or did the name Mary later become associated with bitterness and pain because of her sufferings?  

Months later, my boys gone, my world slowly coming back into focus, I connected the pieces.  My name, the one I’d disliked for so long, made sense.  I am the embodiment of Motherhood – I’ve struggled and won, and I’ve struggled and lost.  I’ve experienced both the joy and the pain of bearing a child.  I’ve experienced the hope and the bitterness of losing children as well.  Three decades into my life, my name makes sense.  I am a mother, and the bitter water of motherhood is who I am.