Beren deMotier * writer * artist * human  

The Bellybutton Wars

            I am frequently amazed at the sick ironies that life has to offer.  At the extent to which God, fate, happenstance, Karma, whatever, will go to in order to make us; a) learn something, b) get what we deserve or c) show us life is a farce.

            Case in point.  Prior to becoming a Donna Reed of the lesbian set I was an avowed and fairly militant feminist.  In fact, a Women’s Studies graduate, capable of being VERY SERIOUS about vast numbers of issues.  Especially regarding women’s bodies.  Most especially my own.  I took the ownership of my body very seriously.  Now, to be fair to my former self, there certainly were “Issues” with a capital “I”; molestation crap, some wretched adolescent encounters with a blonde boy known for his persecution mania and an addiction to inhaled steroids, and on-the-job sexual harassment up the wazoo.  So it shouldn’t be a surprise then, that in a fury of eighties-style reclamation zeal, I even tattooed on my wrist for all to see (though in hieroglyphics so they have to ask) the words “to live, ruler of my body, arms embracing”.

Oh to own my body now.

            You see, I’ve been taken over by squatters.  Our children own me now.

            It all started with my bellybutton.  Well, that’s not true, it started with my breasts, which, before these children were even born, became, not mine, familiar, Madonna-sized and fairly pert, but sources of nutrition and outlandish in size.  By the time I was two weeks pregnant with our first child and two days with our second, my breasts had taken on a life of their own and were making milk for a nation.  And since after they were born I was as essential as the air they breathed, I got used to this belonging to someone else business.

And then came the bellybutton wars. 

There’s a back-story to this.  Long, long ago in a time I barely remember, the wife and I were young lovers much involved with each other.  It was in that time that we made some silly immature little arrangement wherein my belly button belonged to her for a reasonable period of time with an option for renewal.  It was a way of dealing with my commitment phobia.  We thought it was cute, though decidedly unfeminist.  In all likelihood it was sickening, but fortunately we didn’t go about sharing this information indiscriminately.  So it was all the more ironic that years later, once through with the nursing period, both children latched onto my bellybutton with a passion that we can only hope they show to other enthusiasms in their lives.  When they were very young it was a primordial urge thing without rhyme or reason.  They simply had to have me or they would surely die, and if they couldn’t be latched onto a breast then a finger in a bellybutton would have to do.  Later, it became a source of conflict on the way to independence.  They wanted and needed me, they also needed to toddle across the room and see what the world had to offer.  Dragging my shirt up at odd moments fed their need for contact as well as their need to remind me that I had to be there for them at all times, even if they wanted to go off and play for awhile.

This may be one of the downsides of being a stay-at-home mom.

            They are older now, there is no longer any toddling going on.  Both are excellent in the area of large and small motor coordination and could probably walk a balance beam without difficulty, yet still, they want to own me.

            This is probably just to make sure Mama doesn’t.  Jealous little beasties.  It was in a wrestling match on the bed recently that we coined the phrase “bellybutton wars”.  Both kids were lying near me, simultaneously deciding that my middle was where they belonged.  There was a clash of tempers, a pushing of hands, and the commodity in question got up and walked away, the Holy Land on legs.

            And while it may take us going to a hotel, or escaping to our guest room for my wife to get me alone so she can make a claim or two, it’s only going to be time that gives me back my lease from my two tenacious tenants.  Not enough to have grown inside of me, they want to inhabit my outside as well.  Which is normal enough.  Oh, I rebel now and again.  They didn’t like my brief and mutinous fling with a bellybutton ring.  There were pouts for the few months it lasted, before it broke free of its own accord, escaping the territorial fray. 

And I know this doesn’t last.  Soon, far from wanting to be attached, they will want to be as separate as possible.  In moments of mothering bliss, conscious of this looming chasm, I imagine tattoos celebrating these offspring we love.  Permanent symbols of this connection that lasts a lifetime and more.  But in other moments, when I long for physical, as well as psychic space I think of placing another message emblazoned on my body for all to see.

“Mine.”