An Unlikely Peace
By Stephanie Blunt
@jay_and_sparrow
I sit in the stillness of the nursery, the smallest rays sneak through the curtains, giving the space a glowing halo effect. I hold my not-so-little baby girl in my arms, knowing another baby is on the way. The soft sound of the waves crashing from the sound machine wash over us as we slowly sway, keeping time, and for a moment I can forget about the havoc of the world beyond these windows. I think about how peaceful this moment is in the backdrop of lock-downs and uncertainties. In my rocking chair, I think about my own mother, and her journey to motherhood.
Living abroad, away from her family, my mother was pregnant with me during the Gulf War. In the late eighties, my parents left their homeland in Egypt, and moved to a more affluent country in the Middle East for work. After a couple years, they were excited to discover they were pregnant with their first child after years of waiting. During my mom’s second trimester, the war broke out. I don’t think I really truly appreciated what my mom endured being pregnant; it’s beyond my ability to grasp. And yet, being pregnant during a pandemic has given me a greater appreciation for what she went through.
My mother was in a foreign land, away from family. She refused to leave my dad and fly home when the Gulf War broke out. She said the streets felt abandoned once people had fled, but she stuck to her guns, metaphorically, and refused to leave. I thought of her in the early days of my pregnancy and the pandemic when we were scared to breathe in the air that was beyond our masks. She wore a mask at times too, except hers was a heavy gas mask. She wore it as she took walks around the compound, and as her belly grew, so did the bomb threats. There were threats of biological warfare, she explained in Arabic, and the nights were punctuated with air raid sirens. Once you heard them you knew you needed to put your mask on and take cover.
Though I worried about the possibility of getting sick while pregnant, I can’t imagine fearing for both your life and your baby’s life at any given moment. Although, as my mother tells the story, I get the sense that she wasn’t fearful. She was trusting in God and at peace.
I held on to that same trust and peace during my pregnancy, when the doctor's offices and ultrasound clinics were closed. When I wondered how I would manage the pregnancy with two kids under two. When all the programs and rhythms that were a lifeline stopped. But in the midst of the craziness, I had my family nearby.
My parents immigrated to Canada when I was four years old with all the hopes and dreams of a better future for their family. I appreciate the opportunities their sacrifice brought me, coming to a country of peace. When they shut down the parks and the forests early in the pandemic, we escaped to the quiet calm of their property, where we had room to run and trees to sit under. When the winter was harsh and yet the libraries and play centers were closed, we had their house as a shelter to escape to. Being pregnant and yet home with two stir-crazy toddlers, my mom came to help on a daily basis, which, looking back, I don’t know how I would have survived without her.
Driving in the car with the girls in the back on our way to a new playground, I asked my mom what she remembers about war when she was a child. In vivid detail, she described how they painted all the windows in their apartment with dark blue paint to block the light. She explained that doing so would allow their building to appear vacant to reduce the threat of being targeted. She described walls of concrete and brick that were built in front of most apartments to act as buffers if any bombs hit near by. She described running down to the makeshift bomb shelter which just happened to be the occupied basement apartment of their building when the sirens would sound.
When I was 8 days overdue with my daughter Emery, I thought of my mom. I channeled her inner-peace when we decided to delay induction, choosing instead to walk the frozen and abandoned winter streets with my pregnant belly.
My mom was almost two weeks overdue when she was pregnant with me, and I’m sure she felt the burden of it. When my mom recounts my birth story, she says, “I would tell people ‘I’m going to give birth when the war is over.’” Despite the missiles and the threats of imminent danger, she was confident—as my mother often is—that God would work things for her good. On February 28th, 1991, after hearing the radio announce that the Gulf War had ended after Iraq accepted a ceasefire, my mom went into labor. God gave my mom what she had prayed for—I was born on the first day of peace.
My husband literally held me up, emotionally and physically, during our children’s births. For our last two, he got in the birth tub with me and held my weight under my arms as I pushed our babies out into the world. I can’t imagine doing it alone. I honestly don’t think I would have made it. I think of my mom as she had to give birth without my dad, since men weren’t allowed in the hospitals there. She tells me of how it was hard for him to just drop her off and leave. I can only imagine how hard it was for her to be alone through the pain and unknowns of unmedicated childbirth.
I gave birth 9 days past my due date to a beautiful rosy almost 9 pound girl, Emery Vine.The beauty and joy of birth contrasted with the plans of a second lockdown and fear gripping our nation. I reflect back and see how there was much to be thankful for. Amidst the craziness of this year, I felt this unexplainable peace that God was sustaining me, as he did my mother, an unlikely peace through uncertain times.
Guest essay written by Stephanie Blunt. Steph is a mama of three, a coffee shop connoisseur and a friend of the forests. She is the author of a children’s book called Beau and His New AFO and writes about her own journey through motherhood on her blog Motherhood + Maple Syrup. She lives in a small town north of Toronto, Canada and can be found hiking a local trail or at a local coffee shop with her husband Jonathan and their three girls in tow.