I bought a mint green size 0000 onesie halfway through my pregnancy. I hadn’t done a lot of shopping. Morning sickness had kept me occupied well past morning. So, I didn’t collect as many objects for my baby’s room outside of the necessities. I think now about how I didn’t embrace the building of our nest, not as much as I could have, and it’s a regret. But this soft bit of material with its tiny arms and legs sat carefully curled on my bedside table. It rested beside me when I feel asleep and was there when the alarm went off in the morning.
Its downy fabric is easy to recall because I still have it, folded away, 18 years later. I brought it with me to the hospital as a kind of guide, something to steer us all safely to birth. Whatever labour threw at me, at the end we’d have a person to fill it.
It was ridiculously small, and I considered the likelihood that we’d skip right over it and need a size 000 or even 00. But it turns out that after just under 24 hours of contractions and an emergency caesarean, my baby boy was swamped by the outfit. We rolled up the tiny sleeves to see his little wrists engulfed. The nurses gave us a matching knitted cap for his head of black hair. We hadn’t thought about the cold. We stared at one another bare headed in his presence.
The rain fell hard on the ward windows and the four of us found ourselves together for the first time – myself, my partner, our son and his ‘mint’. We of course had no idea what we were doing.
The years slough away when I touch or remember this fabric, the fashion of our first days. It’s not a story I can tell but a feeling – a tenderness coiling through a mother’s body as she misses holding her infant son. Our hours were composed of crooked arms and bouncing bodies, he and I adapting to his rapid growth, his lengthening self and my toughening muscles.
Most of us keep mothering mementos – some are standard fare like a blanket or a first soft toy (I kept the blanket; he still has the soft toy). Others are a little less often acknowledged like milk teeth meant for the Tooth Fairy. We don’t question why we do it, we just know that we need to keep some things from those stages of their/our lives that can at times feel endless but on reflection have passed too soon. Photos aren’t enough. There’s something about touching a thing that mattered to them and us, holding it, looking at it, feeling its weight and texture and sometimes catching the echo of a scent long gone.
What is less often considered is the way that the beloved object holds more than just memories. The way, for example, the onesie or the blanket or the soft toy shaped what we did, felt and thought back then, and continues to do so now.
Soft like his skin and barely there like his brand-new body in the world, the onesie reminded us to ‘handle with care’. It wasn’t bright and bold, those onesies came later and co-created other memories. As he lay in my arms and his arm accidentally brushed his face or his chin curled towards his chest, the velvety material met him safely, reassuring us both. The little snap buttons opened and closed with a satisfying click, confirming that he was snug and warm but also easily accessible when it was time for a bath or a nappy change.
Ranging across disciplines of practice and knowing, in art therapies and psychology, philosophy, feminism, quantum physics and education, there is a growing awareness of the ways that the more-than-human shape us, just as we shape them. The dense cityscapes and the sprawling suburbs, the hard or soft furnishings in our homes, the sounds of trains and fire engines, the atmospheres and weather patterns, materials and objects, animals and pot plants that populate our worlds all matter. They range from annoyances to cherished possessions, bare necessitates to backdrops. They can be things we’ve saved up for and rubbish we put outside on bin day; beloved dogs that answer our call and phones that enable us to text each other across distances when we feel alone. Each of these more-than-human agencies do things in our lives – subtle or life-altering, implicit or explicit, invited or rejected, known or unknown.
That mint green onesie may seem like a memento – harmless, cozy, nostalgic – and it is, but it also textures my memories of our family’s infancy and of what is possible for us in the years to come. As my body longs for a time that we cannot return to, sensations and emotions ripple across my arms, face and chest – warmth and fondness, a held breath, closed eyes and the hint of a tear, love and sadness all entangling. My sense of time slows and stretches in all directions to briefly displace who I am and who we are, now. My baby and my adult son, me as young mother and now as fifty-year-old woman, the fresh body-warmed onesie and the carefully tucked away clothing, safe from dust. We are all here in this moment interacting to produce what comes next.
I know less now about what matters to my son, what feels crucial and shapes his world. He’s far outgrown that onesie and no matter how strong my muscles, there’s no way I can lift him up and carry him today. He’s growing outward, radiant and richly shadowed with curiosity. These are worlds I’d love to share, but ones he wishes to keep close to himself for now, and I have to respect that.
Sometimes he’ll share his music – he has fabulous taste. Sometimes it’s a song that reminds him of me. He offered one a while back as I was recovering from surgery, and those melodies, images and words are bound up tight in my treasure chest of ‘us’. At the time it provided a sense of care and connection, it gave me a little insight into what he might feel about us – a mother peeling peaches for her son, their colours, textures, scents. Like the onesie, the song is doing different things now. After endlessly playing it on my solo drives it has become familiar and redolent with loss. I miss my son even as I celebrate and stress about how he’s grown. I’ve already warned my partner and close friends that when he moves out, I expect to be a mess for a reasonable amount of time. I won’t commit to a definition of ‘reasonable’.
I wonder if the keeping of this onesie and song are a part of the weavings that make me my son’s mother? I’m starting to sense that there’s a special kind of access mothers have to the ways that we are shaped by those we love and also those more-than-human entities and atmospheres that come to matter in our lives. These things will take different forms for different mother/child relationships – maybe it’s a truck or a book, a TV show or a seedling planted, maybe it’s the bowl and spoon they used to decorate the kitchen at mealtimes. Back then you were quietly losing your mind and now you look back and smile – depending of course on how far away from ‘back then’ you are.
As mothers, we’re an active player in supporting our children to grow and leave, whatever that leave-taking looks like, but the time they spend with us also produces material and memory traces, and those traces matter. The mint green onesie, the song and I all hold our unique mother and son past, while at the same time the onesie and the song continue to form our future. These are the threads of our precise and evolving ‘us’ – soft mint and peaches.
If you’re interested in this idea of the more-than-human, check out some of the gorgeous and at times complex works of Kate Boyer, David Abram, Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad, Jane Bennett and many others who might loosely be considered under the New Materialism movement. As an arts-based researcher and therapist these are the waters I’ve been swimming in for a while, and these thoughts and images form atmospheres that co-create new possibilities for my mothering and childing.
This post is written by Dr Ariel Moy. She is passionate about developing mother/child relationships, she has a private practice as a creative arts therapist, is a Professional member of ANZACATA and is an academic teacher, researcher and doctoral supervisor at The MIECAT Institute in Melbourne, Australia.
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