Morning Song, Essay Example

Julia rose with the sun, to which she was no stranger. For 26 long years, her life on the farm had required this of her, and for 26 long years she dreaded the interruption in her sleep; this blindly stumbling into wakefulness.  Begrudgingly she arose and looked out the window. Bright sunlight seared the tip of the window and she winced as rooster’s crow announced the coming morning. The cows, roused from their slumber, reflected the rooster’s sentiment by engaging in loud mooing that almost topped the call of the rooster. Julia walked down the stairs, her heavy steps sounding the arrival of the day’s work.

Outside, the brilliance of the sun blinded her, and the demands of farm life filled the air. Rooster was thankfully quiet, but the mooing of the cows had become even louder. “They’re probably hungry” she thought, as she did most days. Then the labor began in earnest. Julia fed the cows and trudged off to collect eggs from the chicken coop, her behavior dull and automatic. She straightened, tidied, and shoveled bales of hay back into their usual place, after a night of wind and animals left them askew. The sun soaked morning was warning rapidly into a heated blister of a day, and Julia was becoming even heavier with the exhaustion of depression – and heat – that seemed to cling to her like a second skin. She retreated to the shade of the barn and sat heavily on the battered old chair, waiting for someone like her to drop into it. Julia began daydreaming as she gazed listlessly at the specks of barn dust lit up by the golden sun. Before long, sleep was upon her.

Suddenly, Julia woke up with a start. The sounds of the farm were gone and the color of the day had changed somehow – she realized was no longer in the barn. Somehow she had ended up in a large white house somewhere in the suburbs. She knew this by seeing the houses with their manicured lawns, and expressionless facades, from out an open window. Her sudden shift into a seemingly different realm served to wake her from her perpetual stupor. She could hear a number of women speaking in ardent and feverish voices, and Julia felt a tremor of fear. She lay in a bed of white sheets, and something was certainly not right. With that thought, in near panic, she felt an extreme pain in her abdomen and screamed. A doctor and a group of three women appeared, yelled instructions to a frightened and bewildered Julia. An oversized doctor in what appeared to be a smock said to her “I know this is your first time, but you have to remain calm. Breathe and do as I tell you.” Julia could barely tolerate the pain she was experiencing and was not sure that she could even make out the doctor’s words, which became blurrier by the minute as pain and the adrenaline of fear kicked in.

It was then Julia heard the baby crying in a nearby room, her disorientation told her that she had not been conscious for some period of time. As if from a distance, she overheard one of the women exclaim “Isn’t she just beautiful?” Julia looked at her body lying on the bed and noticed she was bundled in blood-soaked gauze – a sure sign that she had been bleeding horribly. She felt dizzy, sick, scared, and oddly excited all at once. With limited success, Julia attempted to regain her composure and determine what was happening, how she arrived in the place so different from that which she had known. Slowly she levered herself into a sitting position. The bleeding seemed to have stopped and she stumbled her way to the adjacent room – her intense need to learn about the crying in the next room was almost palpable; it certainly allowed her to walk under less than perfect conditions.  On her shuffling journey across the room, she looked into a floor length mirror placed surreptitiously in the corner of the room, and she gasped, shocked. Impossibly, she was wearing a Victorian nightgown. Confused, but somehow a little more relaxed, she tentatively poked her head into the adjacent room, a slow suspicion filling her mind.

Upon seeing the group of three women tending a newborn baby, she fully entered the room. She slowly, and somewhat apprehensively, walked towards the small upturned face of the baby and gazed upon that face; immediately and impossibly recognizing the infant as her own. Julia looked into the child’s eyes, humbled by the sheer enormity of what had taken place. The baby began to make small, mewling sounds. With almost complete disregard to the women watching, and wholly fixated on the child, Julia picked up the baby and returned to the other room.  She didn’t ask questions, and she was not offered answers, to Julia it didn’t matter. The power of the infant in her arms had the gift to break through the dull existence that had permeated her life up until this point. Lying awkwardly upon the bed to avoid the blood stains, Julia held the infant in her arms and cooed.  After what felt like an extremely short period of time, the two fell asleep, comfortable in each other’s embrace.

When Julia finally awoke, the women were hovering over the bed with worry and concern in their eyes. Big fear, maybe the biggest fear Julia had ever felt crept into her heart. Somehow that feeling of dullness, with which she had experienced the world, had miraculously shifted – she felt something deep, powerful, and abiding. “Love” she thought. But, something was wrong with the baby, and Julia experienced an unusual terror, which trumped the feeling of love and connectedness she felt for this new extension of herself. For a night and day, Julia sat with the child and the women, that is, when they weren’t off with the baby somewhere. Durning these times she moaned and rocked; balled up in fear, worry, and concern. The doctor tried to comfort Julia by saying “We’re doing the best we can, we just need more time.” Whenever allowed, Julia would hold the child to her, singing softly. Whenever the women had to take the beautiful baby away for testing and treatment, Julia felt a new sensation of jealousy and anger. Yet, she allowed this for the sake of her baby. Given the newness, all the unfelt feelings, and the physical exertion Julia had experienced, she was depleted. Nevertheless, she could barely sleep through the night so as not to miss gazing upon the baby in all her new simplicity.  Watching the child sleep caused a wellspring of joy within Julia, something she had never known. Throughout the night, she waited anxiously and excitedly for the infant to open her eyes and gaze upon her new mother.

Occasionally, when the baby was away, or when Julia could pry her eyes from the infant’s visage, she would gaze out the window at those manicured lawns and featureless houses. The child had somehow become a part of her. She felt a sense of purpose and wonderment toward life that had never existed for her. And sometime during the afternoon of the next day, as daylight swept past the window, Julia was informed that the baby was fine. Joyfully the women sighed in relief and the doctor confirmed that the child would likely live a long and happy life. With this news, the last vestige of Julia’s numbed and depressed manner of experiencing life fell away; she and the baby fell into a warm and restful sleep, with Julia softly singing to the infant.

Some hours later, Julia awoke with a start. The first thing that struck her was the smell – barn. She looked in her arms and was shocked by the absence of the child – her child. Her sense of loss was terrible, and she could barely complete the day’s duties. Again and again her mind would return to her experience of being a mother, the precious closeness she felt with her daughter, the hours of looking into the beautiful baby’s eyes.  The day dragged on like a great punishment, and she finally returned to the farmhouse – still alone. Her mind kept returning to what her own doctor had told her several years earlier, “You have suffered too much child, and you will never be able to conceive, or to give birth to a child of your own.” She would never share the joy, the love, the intimacy that she had felt with a child, a child of her own flesh and blood. A child lost in memory while sleeping in an old chair in a dusty barn. Julia became wooden, frozen, an icy abyss seemed to envelope her, and it was then that she started to plan.