A lady at this time frequently either feels faint, or actually faints away; she is often either giddy, or sick, or nervous, and in some instances even hysterical. Although, in rare cases, some women do not even know the precise time when they quicken.
The sensation of “quickening” is said by many ladies to resemble the fluttering of a bird; by others it is likened to either a heaving, or a beating, or rearing sensation; accompanied, sometimes, with a frightened feeling; these flutterings, or heavings, or beatings, after the first day of quickening, usually come on half a dozen or a dozen times a day.
?—?From Advice to a Wife on the Management of Herself,
Pye Henry Chavasse, 1873
Sophie Forrester,
Vancouver Barracks,
April 17, 1885
This afternoon the dreams were so vivid that I could smell burned wood, but it was only Charlotte stoking the cook stove. Hours have since passed, she has long gone to bed and it is dark outside, yet I know I will lie here awake for some time. A body can only sleep so much of its life away.
I wonder what conjures these memories just now. I have tried to put them out of my mind to no avail. I suspect all this lying about and worrying allows the nightmares to grow stronger and more vivid, so that I half expect to see Father outside in the rain.
I wish I could recall him in some other way, kind and laughing, as he was when I was very small, but instead I imagine him in the end, half-naked, his wild gray beard tangled with the mat of gray hair on his chest. Old and unkempt and mad, but his body still powerful.
I am ashamed to realize it has been nearly five years since I returned home. Are there any remains of the barn? Even when I left for normal school, already the dandelions and nettles had begun to sprout in the ashes, so it has likely succumbed to the forest by now. What of the charred rafters, or the blackened door frame? I recall that it stood alone, like a ghostly entrance.
And his sculptures? Father said the marble would harden with time and shed off the elements, yet I cannot guess how they have fared. Galloping horses, the women in their flowing gowns, griffins, angels, tragic beasts. The way they are littered among the trails and meadows, as a child I always pictured a giant letting them fall them from his pocket like pebbles as he walked.
It was not entirely as magical as I should like to remember. All his wages spent on marble, even when we owed the grocer. Father carting the great slabs behind old Molly the mule as he searched for the perfect meadow or the precise light through the trees, so that even I had to fear for his sanity.
Yet they are astonishing creations. Once the baby is born, we will visit Mother, and Allen will be able to see them at last. The paths are surely grown over, but I could find my way to the bear. He is dearest to me. Full-sized, taller than a man, so that I remember Father used a footstool as he worked. Such a dramatic pose, standing on his hind legs, roaring at the sky, teeth and claws carved sharply into the marble. I remember those summer days when Father was away at the quarry, and I would sit at the bear’s feet and watch the forest chickadees gathered atop his head. A mesmerizing kind of scene, for of course the little birds did not know to be afraid; the bear was frozen harmlessly in rock, but as they fluttered and landed upon him, I could see his ferocious agony.
I am sorry the bear is broken now?—?I do not know if Father could have mended him if he tried. The sledgehammer had knocked away one of his front paws, and he was riddled with chips and cracks. Still, I should like to see him again.
Even after all these years I can taste the air with its marble dust and green summer leaves. I can hear the echo of mallet and chisel and feel the sunlight that filtered down through the canopy. I was nearly as wild as Father those summer days, my legs bare, my hair untied, and my nose sunburned.
There is a mythical element to our childhood, it seems, that stays with us always. When we are young, we consume the world in great gulps, and it consumes us, and everything is mysterious and alive and fills us with desire and wonder, fear, and guilt. With the passing of the years, however, those memories become distant and malleable, and we shape them into the stories of who we are. We are brave, or we are cowardly. We are loving, or we are cruel.
All my life, I have only considered this through the eyes of the child. Yet now, my view begins to shift. More than anything I want to hold this little baby, to feel his warm weight in my arms and kiss his small fingers. Yet, too, it is such solemn responsibility. To think that these next years, as Allen and I make choices that will seem to us so mundane and ordinary, we will shape our child’s vision of the world.