Hold on

Here we go again. With two curious boys (ages five and 16 months) I can plan to spend at least one day of my life, every year, wrapped in a down comforter, huddled in the fetal position on my bed, lights off, sweat-dampened hair pulled into a messy mop. Naturally, the stomach bug will hit them first, running rampant through their tiny digestive systems, ultimately infecting every corner of our toy-laden home. And then, after several days of nursing them back to health, I will get that ache in my own gut. My mouth will water, and I’ll know it’s time to call in Dad for back up.

Last week, I found myself in this familiar station. As I sipped Gatorade and licked the salt from crackers, reluctant to actually consume solid food, I marveled at the magic of “fetal position.” If I could twist my body just right, perfectly hug elbows to knees, and lay very still, the waves of nausea would calm and the clench of cramps would ease. My hunkered crouch was no different than my sixteen-month-old’s was in his crib, though he prefers the rump-up version and that just wouldn’t be pleasant for anyone if I attempted it. Regardless, I felt safe. He felt safe. As human beings, we all recognize this position as the soundest retreat we can find with only our vulnerable bodies to protect us. It is momentary relief, of course. It does not cure or prevent. Merely, it provides space to breathe.

One of my dearest college friends is a member of the Rosebud Sioux of South Dakota. One afternoon, years ago, we were discussing the difficulty of translating between native languages and English and that some meanings may never translate. He told me about the Lakota word, “ach-ni-a,” which has two meanings. It means to both hold something in the fetal position, as if you are clutching it tightly to keep it safe, but it also means that there is potential that something is being clutched too tightly and, thus, it is in danger of strangulation. (Think Sméagol from Lord of the Rings and his “Precious.”)

This word made an impression on me. What a clear way to describe the dichotomy of retreat from fear, that hope comes from drawing inward, clutching something, even if it is only yourself.

Ach-ni-a.

It wouldn’t be long before I needed this wellspring of hope in my own life. By my senior year of college, my mother had been diagnosed with carcinoid cancer and within five years, every middle-of-the-night phone call, every routine visit to MD Anderson Hospital, saturated my thoughts with fear. 

Cancer is not contagious, so one would think it was not protection that I needed, that I was not the person under attack, that I needed no refuge from sickness. But my body felt otherwise. As a grown woman, I would curl myself into my mother’s bed just to be close to her when she was too weak to join the family in the living room. Breathing was all I could manage. My throat was too clenched to speak, but she knew what I was thinking. 

“I wish I could have seen your children,” she whispered one day. I was startled that she had so accurately named my fear. I drew my body in closer, secretly hoping I could disappear within myself rather than confront the implications of her desire. 

For perhaps six months, I hugged my empty womb. I hoped for my mother’s recovery, unsure that I could ever give her the grandchild she desired. And then the news came. My own body was growing into a vessel of hope, the kind of hope that can only come into one’s life swaddled and cooing. A whole new fear of motherhood took hold of my mind and body, and when life was delivered, a grandson, my mother witness to it. She held her grandchild and breathed in the new life.

And just as quickly as the fear eased its grasp, it came again on a clear winter morning as my father, my brother, and myself stood around my mother’s bed as she drew in her own last breath. My brother held her left hand. My father, her right. And I placed my hand on her leg. We held on to her, too fearful to release our touch even for a moment. We watched the slow, shallow rise and fall of her chest. I knew that I could no longer crawl into her space and find respite. That the more I sought her protection, the tighter my heart felt. My father and my brother must have felt this same sensation. After several hours … or rather several years perhaps, my father rubbed her hand and released his hold. He sat back. I inhaled and did the same. Without a word between us, my brother was the last to release her hand from his own. We looked at her face; we looked at one another. And then we knew. She was gone. She was no longer holding on to this world so tightly because we no longer needed to hold her so tightly. All those years, I had assumed I was holding on to her, or memories of her in good health. I think now that my fetal position was more about finding shelter from the fear of a world without her, without the creation of new memories.

Ach-ni-a. In our attempt to find safety in the midst of fear, we often are only clutching the fear to our own bodies—holding it close because its path is too unpredictable to release.

My boys, shrouded in their youthful innocence, must know this. They heal much more quickly than I. And while they linger a little longer on their mother’s lap when sick, they do not curl within themselves alone in their rooms, as I do. They are well and playing within 24 hours of diagnosis, while it takes me three days to face the world again. Ach-ni-a.

Fear is natural to this world and is far too great to try to internalize. A moment of comfort only serves to grow the hold fear can take on our spirits. Amy J.C. Cuddy, assistant professor at Harvard Business School even lectures on the effects of sleeping in the fetal position. She says that it can directly impact success; just as smiling encourages happiness, the fetal position encourages failure. It’s cyclical. 

We are cyclical, too.