"You are My Sun, My Moon, and All My Stars."
“You are my sun, my moon , and all my stars.” – E.E. Cummings
For the past several nights, I’ve sat cross-legged under the waning and waxing full moon. As the shadows stretch past midnight, I’ve spread my blue blanket over the grass and gazed at the night sky. My belly is the shape of the full moon—a planet wrapped in tightly-stretched skin. I am 39 weeks pregnant. I am having trouble sleeping.
From the beginning of this pregnancy, I have connected with my son—it feels even funny to write that because he is still such an essence to me—through the cosmos: moon, stars, night-scapes. His nursery is much like a planetarium, complete with constellations on the ceiling. It felt natural to carve this space for him because I feel so sure that he belongs more to the element of air than earth. That he is more a thousand twinkling stars than even an already-set sun. A boy of the night. The cosmos. His energy is different than my daughter’s was: it’s quieter, more reflective, gentler and slightly more assured. He feels like he’s lived other lives: an “old soul.” Others call children with this energy star children.
By comparison, my daughter felt like the bright dawning of a new era—a rose-gold hue that shone as bright as the sun when she was in my womb. Her personality has turned out to be quite like this: wonder-filled, joyful, radiant. People have described her as sunny, in fact. She is also insecure and needs reassurance in the way that we all do when traversing new worlds for the first time: when we are young. I knew she was greener than my son before she was born.
How does a mother know these things? Are they actually desires morphed into stories? Does she just wonder at the mystery so intently that narrative weaves a “feeling?”
Does it even matter?
What I know is this…sitting under the moon, cross-legged on a blue blanket, I feel a difference in my son’s spirit than I felt in my daughter’s: a knowing-ness. He carries the feeling of someone whose strength is in the serenity of experience. More of a space holder than a talker. Someone who heals by allowing pain to surface, then pass. It is somewhat out-of-balance with my anxious energy—wanting to know when, exactly, he’ll arrive, who he’ll be, how to help him prevent the struggles meant for him to grow.
Amidst my wonderings, I watch my mind cross over into fear: that the sensitive, empathic soul I sense my son to be will not conform to gender norms. That he will carry more feminine qualities than masculine. That he’ll be more fluid, or neutral, or awakened, than our still widely-accepted (although slowly shifting) binary system allows, therefore causing him pain. I don’t want him to feel pain. And the even deeper truth: I don’t want to feel pain, either.
This line of thinking comes straight from the lens of my childhood, of course: I grew up with a closeted gay father whose secret I carried until he came out, three months after my mother died. I was 22, just on the precipice of being an adult. Sexuality meant confliction to me—suffering despite a backdrop of love. Much of my adolescent fears about what “gay” meant led to an internalized homophobia that I could not name—of which I was deeply ashamed. I loved my father and yet, deep in a place still difficult for me to expose, I wished he were a “real” man.
Now, with boy growing inside me, I wonder more at what a “real” man is than I feel shame about my adherence to cultural understandings. My journey, too, has been informed by who I chose, and still choose, to marry: my husband, who is defined much by his masculinity—athlete, veteran, CEO. Although there is a tender, poetic astronomer inside of him, he still wears the mask of masculinity that I don’t want my child to feel pressured into wearing.
When my husband and I were selecting a name, he wanted one that sounded strong. I spent much of my pregnancy rebelling against this concept—picturing a boy who wanted a feather in his hair being made to conform. Even writing that makes me stiffen, want to fight for the freedom to express unabashedly, to not be silenced by expectation. This resistance has caused me much suffering over the last nine months, until—recently—I made friends with my insecurity about raising a boy. Until I realized that the power dynamic within my marriage was, in fact, my teacher. That force will always create resistance. That my strength was in awareness, acceptance, surrender to self. That all resistance can lead to enlightenment if we allow it.
The strong name we’ve chosen for our son also means “a giver of light.”
On one of the nights I sat under the moon, a star shot across the sky. I only saw it because my eyes were open. I only witnessed its comet-long tail because I was present to not only its blazing, but to the negative, shadow space that framed it.
And so it is. The mystery of my son’s path, despite my own stories, will be. For now, there are only questions and stars and phases of self-awakening. I have learned this from my family, from my husband: if I love unconditionally—which is as sure as the rising moon—the answers will come through growth. Or perhaps, in much the same way my son’s energy has already stirred my consciousness, the unknowable lessons we are meant to learn in this lifetime will converge into a constellation that guides other wanderers by its great light.
As the great poem ends:
“Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born:
yours is the darkness of my soul’s return—
you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars” - E.E. Cummings
