I have a license to carry concealed fireams!

Jeff pulls out on the highway in front of a speeding Corvette, and he and his wife become the targets of road rage. The furious motorist charges at them across the shoulder of the road, screaming; and Sandra Steingraber, seven months pregnant, climbs out of her seat and says to him, “We really are sorry.” Her words don’t stop him. But her baby does:

…he’s not listening at all, but, instead, has become transfixed by my enormous belly…

He shakes his head slowly. Then he starts to cry.

He walks backward toward the Corvette. The door slams. He peels out. I get back in the car.

I was moved to tears by this story. How many times do my children protect me from harm? How does their innocence move me to seek innocence? Their natural desire to explore, learn, grow and create often protects me from losing context. One of my boys eats snow–EEEW! The neighbors have dogs; we live next to the highway and downhill from a city street; I don’t want him to get sick. There is a part of me that wishes he could just let go–that we could all heap plates with this winter’s record-breaking snow and cover them with maple syrup, as Laura did in Little House in the Big Woods. But while we live in the same world as Laura, and in nearly the same place, we don’t live in those days.

So I try to rein him in, but he still eats snow. I love the total abandon my children bring to life, and in their process of learning, I am challenged in my own thinking. In “Hay Moon,” Steingraber is finishing up her book tour in Alaska, and spends the chapter dealing with “persistent organic pollutants” (POPs–including DDT, PCBs, and dioxin), delving more deeply into the the poisons that circulate in the air and snow and human bodies of our world. In the midst of all the technical detail, what strikes me is how much the baby growing inside of her dictates her actions, her thoughts, and her concerns. At seven months, she is becoming more and more aware of her baby’s presence and independent rhythms, developing a sense of herself as a mother in relationship with her baby, a new “motherselfhood.” Doing this in the context of her research brings hers something else as well:

…another kind of identity shift. Call it mother-earth-hood: an awareness of how my own doubled self is contained within the body of the world….The glacier’s meltwater fills the inlet that feeds the fish on which we two both feed. Prenatal care means taking care of water, fish, and glaciers. There is no other world than this one.

There! I feel a shimmy! Another shimmy! And two kicks in quick succession! I laugh out loud. Across the bay, the glacier pours itself slowly into the sea.

I believe that even in utero, children can both ground us in our own selves and challenge us to see things beyond ourselves. In an Alaskan midwife’s office, far from her familiar city-hospital setting, Steingraber becomes aware

…of how different a prenatal checkup feels when the trappings of medical technology are removed….In the presence of plastic tubing and partitioning curtains, I shed my identity and become someone else–a patient who responds obediently but who can’t formulate intelligent follow-up questions. But in this room, I am still myself.

The midwife’s hands read her body and her baby’s body, allowing Steingraber to feel her baby’s head between her hands. Children have a way of helping us to be more real, of removing formal trappings and connecting us to ourselves. They protect us from disconnection–not only from our own bodies and selves, but from the world around us.

How easy it is to sit on the banks of the unfishable, undrinkable rivers of Illinois while munching a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish and sipping bottled water. But in rural Alaska “elsewhere” is so remote from life here as to be irrelevant. The food from this place has to feed me and my baby for another week. The food from this place will become the body of my baby. It is irreplaceable.

Children allow us–force us! to become more intimate with our world. Are there children in your life who do this for you? Are children present, and children’s concerns recognized, in the institutions (businesses, churches, governments) of your home place? For as we seek to nurture, include, care for, and protect our children, they protect our awareness of the vital connections that sustain us all.

“There is no other world than this one.”

I first began reading Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood about this time last year. I was expecting our fifth baby, and I thought it would be fun to journey through this pregnancy with Sandra Steingraber. I was immediately drawn in. The prose was beautiful–the science was engaging. But then my own maternal environment began to claim my attention. My blood pressure began to rise, and I began to worry–what if I had to be on medication for the rest of my pregnancy, or the rest of my life? What about the heart disease and diabetes among my relatives? I put the book down for a month or two.

When I found time to come back to it (between self-administered blood pressure measurements while on “modified bed rest”), we received an urgent prayer request: a couple we knew, old friends, were seeing heart troubles with their newborn baby, who would need surgery immediately. The problems turned out to be related to DiGeorge Syndrome, which Steingraber describes in the second chapter (“Hunger Moon”) of Having Faith. My heart ached for my old friends–but selfishly I began to worry about our own little one. What about my “advanced maternal age ” (40), mercury in the fish, financial stress, relationship stress, just-plain-busy stress–and that blood pressure (which it was time to check again)? I felt fear at every turn, and decided that there would be another time for Having Faith.

When Kriss mentioned this book, I jumped. Here was something I really was excited to read, was waiting for the chance, really, though for so long it was a journey I did not yet want to confront. But now I am in a different place, and I have a chance to read and and discuss this with friends. So, as Steingraber says in her prologue, “It is a good day for the beginnings of journeys.”

Waiting

Steingraber begins her story in the “Old Moon” of January, as she is waiting for her answer to an old question: Am I pregnant? From the college bathroom where she waits the three minutes it takes for the drugstore pregnancy test to deliver its results, Steingraber shares with us the history of pregnancy tests, her experience of making such secretive, personal purchases (and perhaps we remember our own feelings), and the complex, intricate biological processes that make life-changing moments.

Now we come to the crossroads, the crux of the matter, the source of my lady-or-the-tiger inquiry. An ovulated, unfertilized human egg has a lifespan of just twelve to twenty-four hours. Forty-eight hours, tops. If it dies a maiden, its journey ends…. If, on the other hand, something else has happened during the trip down the tunnel…then our story changes…. [and] the rest of my life is going to be very different.

We continue to wait and wonder with her: Is this it? Will she be pregnant? And as I wait with her, reading, I wonder: What am I waiting for that will make my life very different? Is there something in this waiting that I do not yet want to confront? Am I postponing “looking at the wand” in my own life because I am not sure if I am ready to begin the journey it may announce?

The announcement of a life-journey can happen quickly; Steingraber gets her answer in the brief pause in the restroom: “Now there are two of us.”

Restriction Points

Beginning a new journey of any kind is a bit fearful, because “no important journey ends without profoundly changing the one who undertakes it.”p. 16 As I dive into the second chapter, “Hunger Moon,” I am struck by two things: hunger and choice.

Having gone through pregnancy several times, I know that not wanting to eat and yet needing to eat something to stave off nausea go hand in hand. My particular hunger varied dramatically with each pregnancy. With my twins, I craved meat and lipstick.Andy and I drove all over southern Illinois, nearly crossing into Ohio in our quest for a burger. I never did eat the lipstick, but there were times I avoided wearing it because the temptation was so strong. Then with my third child, bagels; fizzy-water, wine, and nothing hot with the fourth; and with the fifth, cottage cheese. Crazy.

I think hunger should go with us on any journey. It drives us to get what we need, to move forward, to survive.

Choosing to begin one particular journey may close doors to others for good. The pregnancy test makes Steingraber late for class, and “Hunger Moon” deals with the consequences of beginning the journey to parenthood. How should she plan for this transformation of her life? What needs to change to make room for it? What can she no longer do? And the process happens on the cellular level as well: stem-cells move around the developing embryo, brushing up against each other and being changed by their contacts along the way. “Embyologists talk about embyonic stem cells passing through ‘restriction points’ as they migrate. During these moments, whole strings of genes are turned off, leaving only the few needed for a cell’s new, more specialized life.”p.16 I can empathize with Steingraber when she says:

I feel a little like a migrating embryonic cell myself, sent out on a journey that seems not entirely of my own choosing or under my own direction…. I suspect I will be changed by it, that some new identity is forthcoming. Restriction points lie ahead.

Here are some questions that I am pondering: What journey am I on right now that is profoundly changing me? Is this journey one of my own choosing? What about this journey can I control? What is out of my control? Am I happy about the new identity that is forthcoming? What are the restriction points on this journey? What new doors will open. What doors will be closed forever? What are the risks of closing that door?

I am looking forward to our discussion!

Perhaps the best thing about the web, and the blogosphere in particular, is that it enables you to connect with like-minded people you might never meet otherwise.
–Kriss M. at Circle M Farm

On January 27th, 2008, Reading Circle Books will host its first group! In her wonderful invitation to our first Reading Circle, Kriss at Circle M Farm, a small, 20-acre Community Supported Agriculture homestead in southwestern Wisconsin, describes how she heard author Sandra Steingraber read from her work at a farmers’ conference, ordered a copy from the library, and reviewed it on her blog. That review led to further unexpected connections–Sandra commented on Kris’ blog, and Nicole suggested reading Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood here at Reading Circle Books.

This wasn’t something I plannedMy plan was to try to round up a group (or several) to read Timothy Tyson’s Blood Done Sign My Name, and to launch only when everything seemed properly in order. So much for plans. And welcome to Reading Circle Books.com “Beta!” ; it emerged naturally (um…organically?) from people reading and talking together. I think her story is a great example of how books “live” in human community and interaction. Reading Circle Books is intended to help people encounter books on those terms; to support reading and learning together.

Here at the beginning of the 21st Century, the world wide web has transformed the possibilities for this kind of thing. The internet connects us (however imperfectly) across barriers of geography, race, class, age, ability, family situation, income, education, religion, culture, and even language. The monologue of the powerful few, for good or ill, is overcome by connections among the many. With those connections come power–ordinary people like you and me are given the power (and therefore the responsibility) of participation in each others’ lives.

Lee & Sachi LeFever capture this dynamic in their short Common Craft video, “Blogs in Plain English“:

But really, the fuss is not about how blogs work – it’s what people like you do with them that matters….you build relationships with your readers and other bloggers, [who] often work together. In addition to comments, you’ll read each other’s blogs, quote each other and link your blogs together. This creates communities of bloggers that inspire and motivate each other….

Here at Reading Circle Books, I hope to inspire and motivate communities of readers and lifelong learners. As Lee & Sachi say:

So, it’s up to you – what will you do with this new power?

Kriss over at Circle M Farm suggested Having Faith after reading author Sandra Steingraber’s earlier book, Living Downstream. We’ll be reading it together beginning in January, 2008, with Nicole Five Pennies as our host.

So go look up Kris’ wonderful invitation to read together, get your copy (the little blue box by the title will let you find it at Amazon, your local Book Sense bookseller, or your local World Cat library) and come back here on January 27th, 2008 to join the conversation!

Strong Science & Breathtaking Beauty

Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood

Sandra Steingraber

Average Review

An uncommon telling of a common story

A captivating and informative read

MUST READ!!!!!

A practical, personal exploration of new motherhood shaped by scientific literacy, moral passion, and gorgeous prose.

hReview by CircleReader, 2008/01/15

For more information about the book (including excerpts!), and about how this blog-empowered book club is supposed to work, visit the homepage for our Having Faith Reading Circle!