Stepping over the 17 weeks mark
The day I stepped over the 17 weeks pregnant mark coincided with me being at a crossroads. I'm feeling anxiety and sorrow.
Meanwhile, my body is changing, and it's wonderful to observe these changes. My body is expanding to help a human being grow. I've been working on the final changes in a co-authored chapter (it is about sufficiency and business, and is mainly theoretical, though there are illustrative examples too) and at the same time sensing so deeply my own materiality. It is so interesting how oftentimes academic works feel almost sterile while they are written by living human beings who breathe, eat, feel pain, go to the bathroom, and give birth.
I still haven't felt my baby's moves yet. At least I cannot tell the difference between various sensations I am experiencing within my body's realm.
I'm still wearing my normal clothes every day, apart from one pair of shorts that felt too tight around my waist. I haven't bought (or otherwise acquired) anything for the baby yet. I will not be buying any expensive items such as a pram or special furniture at all. I wrote more about it in this post. There won't be a baby shower either. As always, this is not how fellow humans should relate with inviting baby-related items into their lives. It's just my own story.
A fellow human asked: Do you plan to extend your minimalist practice to this domain [baby-related]?
What a wonderful question! My answer to it is yes, absolutely. To me, minimalist practices are not only practices of consumption and relating with objects differently, but they are also practices of relating with time, the self, human and non-human others, and nature, in the most beautiful way. Caring, loving, gentle, kind, considerate, respectful, empathetic, compassionate. Living with less frees up so much time for working on our true careers in the world: being good persons. Good friends, neighbours, parents, siblings, teachers, and so on.
These days, I think about my own childhood a lot, especially the chapter before I went to school. It was the happiest part of my childhood. After I started school, I felt so much pressure to do well academically, to do well in all subjects. I experienced this "doing well in everything" as something that didn't allow my unique self to thrive and develop organically, to figure out what my own interests were. I had to leave this figuring out until my early 20s. Excessive home work and extracurricular activities left almost no time for self exploration. I don't know if homework still exists (perhaps it depends on a country), but I feel that it encourages humans to develop an unhealthy relationship with work later on, such as working unpaid overtime, sacrificing one's wellbeing for one's job.
Yet, many practices before I began my school education were nurturing, and I contemplate them in relation to my own yet unborn baby. My mother and stepfather never referred to those practices as practices of sustainable minimalism, zero-waste, slow parenting or voluntary simplicity. These exact words were not part of their vocabulary. But as a researcher, if I were to study their practices right now, I would say that they were aligned, in many ways, with these modes of living.
I used to have some wooden toys, but most of the time I was allowed to play with common objects in the household. My favourite ones were shoe boxes and shoe laces, and books with illustrations that I couldn't read yet. The most magical objects were sea urchins, corals, and large shells in my grandmother's home, as well as her jewellery made from various stones. Perhaps some fellow humans would think that my family deprived my brother and me of toys, but I never felt that it was the case. At the age of, say 3 or 4, I did not know that those shoe boxes, spoons, or fruits were not sold as toys within the capitalist system.
Every day, we spent much time in nature. When we were in a big city, we went to a park. When we lived in a rural area, we simply went outside. The part where we went to looked to me, as a child, different every day. I was not unhappy about being in the same park every day. I only knew that it was full of magical creatures, toys and fascinating objects.
My mother and stepfather involved my brother and I in many day-to-day activities. We always wanted to help. Though we were not helping much in practical terms (as very young children, we were naturally clumsy and slow), helping was part of learning. Learning how to deal with food, how to plant seeds, how and when to harvest something. We were never watching tv when my mother and stepfather were cooking.
I cannot ask my mother anymore (she died in her early 40s) whether or not there was any particular life philosophy behind it, but my family always gravitated towards natural materials too. Cotton, linen, wool, wood. As children, we were surrounded by items made from these materials.
We were not supervised too closely and constantly. We were allowed to pick bugs to see them closer, to spend hours turning pages of some books, to touch the soil, to climb trees.
My mother would read books and sing for us, but we were also encouraged to come up with our own stories, especially about the area that surrounded us and various beings (trees, mushrooms, the stars, the moon) in the universe. We were encouraged to listen to storms, winds, and rain.
We ate simple food and would go out, as a family, rather rarely. Only for special occasions. We would bake at home, together. We would celebrate birthdays and other occasions with delicious, home-made food, convivial atmosphere and natural decorations. Most often, flowers. At times, something made from paper (e.g., paper snowflakes).
We were encouraged to care for house plants and pets. I think it nurtured care in us, and a sense of responsibility.
Up until I was 5 or so, and my brother was 3, we shared a room. Then each of us had their own room. We didn't have furniture specifically designed for children. In fact, our rooms never looked obviously different to a normal room where an adult human being would live. In my room, I often had flowers and other things I would bring home from nature. At times even living beings such as various bugs (which obviously was not a good practice). I would read and press flowers a lot. And I used to paint too.